Thou Shalt Not
by The Mad Poet
Summary: The most patient and merciful of Gods only offers so many chances. After that, we swim the flood on our own. Till the End of Time Novelization...with the Poet's personal touch. In progress. New chapter up 7/20.
1. 00

**DISCLAIMER:** I, The Mad Poet, do not own any Star Ocean game, publication, or related character. I am a poor fan with too much time on my hands with no money, so don't sue me. This novelization is being written solely for my own sick, twisted amusement; and views expressed herein do not reflect those of the original creators. Do not expect a replica of the game—I am One Sick Puppy. By that token, the following fanfiction and all original concepts therein are my own; do not steal them because I will find out and beat you death with a crowbar. I know where you sleep.

Expect explicit violence, mature themes, politics, crude and/or ethnic jokes, lots of prejudice, more violence, mindgames, a reality check, and enough religious references to choke a Mormon choir.

Flames will be used to work on my tan.

Much credit, love, and general adoration to Batpig Sexgod, who has helped me with so much of this—including putting up with that awful excuse for an SO game long enough to start this.

* * *

**

* * *

**

**THOU SHALT NOT**

**00**

It was late afternoon on a day drenched with the warm sun of storybook perfection, and the air was thickly clean with seasalt and greenery; organic and fresh and wholly alive. Through the skylight ceiling of the Grantier Resort Hotel the sky was high and clear and flawlessly azure without even the memory of clouds. Through the high glass walls the beach was clearly visible as a palm-jeweled bracelet of golden sand kissed with white foam and blue water, where the dim specks of vacationers swam in the gentle surf or lay prone beneath shade or sunlight. In the expansive lounge a fern-adorned fountain which dominated its center tossed spangles of reflected brilliance upon the artfully scalloped walls--cream not white, and softer on the eyes--and tiny droplets of moisture onto the padded seats which surrounded it. Somewhere, children ran through the plush carpeted hallways, and their gales of squealing laughter carried across the grounds--just one more sweet summer sound in a world without winter, a careful paradise of careless poise and pleasure. Like the seabirds and the breeze, the music of the surf, it was sublime.

Strange among those natural sounds was the brief, subtle hydraulic hiss of an internal door--the small polished plaque beside it read 'Simulation Center'--as it opened to admit a young man with his eyes squinted into thin chinks of cerulean against the sudden brightness. He paused for a moment, a thourougly average young man of a thorougly average build, with his richly blue-black hair cut into a thoroughly average and artful short raggedness which could have easily been tousled into whatever generic style came into fashion on the campus of his Terran college. He wore sandals and khaki shorts and the sleeveless poly microfiber zip-down which was all the rage this year in white and opened, as was also all the rage, halfway down his unremarkable chest. Except for the untanned, unburned pallor of his skin, so foreign to this sunwashed hideaway, he could have been any of a hundred thousand human boys vacationing on the luxuriant equator of Hyda IV. And, really, that was all he was.

With the heavy, bone-weary moan of a fieldbroken soldier he stumbled away from the safe support of the doorway into the lobby itself, rolling his head on his neck to loosen muscles tight with tension and the last guttering flows of adrenaline; muscles man no longer used on a normal and natural basis which protested loudly and painfully both at being so rudely awakened. His face was flushed, and in the shifting light of fountain-dapples his arms bore their own faint sheen of moisture in the form of a thin sweat. But he was smiling, when he dropped heavily onto the cushioned bench about the fountain's rim. He braced his hands on his knees and lowered his head, letting out a tired, happy sigh and enjoying the cool damp air that flowed from the moving water.

A large soft drink cup was thrust abruptly into his face, the jutting straw nearly jabbing him in the eye, and the boy jumped with a singularly unmasculine yelp. "Woah!" Pinwheeling his arms for a moment, he managed somehow to regain his balance and not tumble backwards into the fountain. It left him heaving and he put a hand over his heart with a gasp, perhaps a little melodramatically; certain that he was going to suffer a heart attack there and then, at the bright young age of nineteen, before he could even complete his symbology major. He jerked his head towards the source of the attack as it giggled softly, and moved the drink back to a safe distance.

"Here you go!"

The voice of the girl was new to the room, sweet and pleasant and just high enough to be slightly grating in its cheer. She herself was not, but matched the voice perfectly with a tan only slightly too pink, which would be red by the evening, and her small hands with trim round nails painted a soft bubblegum color against the bright commercial blue and white and yellow of the cup. The color was thematic and she wore a light shirt over her swimsuit, breezy but hooded and long-sleeved in a muted version of the shade which had once--by the tube of flavored lipstick she had owned as a child--been dubbed Peppermint Yum-Yum. When he was twelve she had kissed him with it and he had informed her solemnly that it tasted not of peppermint but toothpaste and pink bismuth, and she had hit him and run away. Now, the color made her fine brown hair look less ashy and more red where a few drying, vagrant wisps had not been pulled back.

"Ah, hi Sophia. . ." He blinked slightly up at her, then made a face and took the offered soda. He _was_ thirsty, and when he took a drink the icy cola was a shock and relief on his throat. He shivered slightly, before gesturing with the cup as she sat down next to him. "You _startled_ me. I thought you were going swimming down at the beach."

She closed her eyes, and took a deep breath before letting it out and turning her small nose imperiously upward. "I was waiting for you, but you never came!" Leaning forward, Sophia fixed him with a look that seemed dreadedly similar to the petulant glare he had received upon debunking the myth of the sacred lipstick--hurt and pouting and angry, and one hundred percent _girl_; that very essence of guilt trips. "You _said_ you'd play a few games and then head right over. . ."

For a moment, all the boy could do was flinch slightly and scramble for an excuse as he continued to suck at his straw as if unaffected by that horrible weapon of weapons. After a moment he swallowed, and ducked his head submissively as he turned towards her. "Uh. . .I'm sorry! I didn't plan on staying so long. I just, you know, got kinda sucked in. . ."

"All right, well." He cringed at the tone, which was one his mother assumed herself only when he was really, deeply, and truly in for it. She shook her head in exasperation, lip moving out slightly in a pout as she gestured in frustration. "That's what I thought happened. You're so predictable. If you're going to ignore me you could at least have a decent excuse. Didn't you say you said 'such an awful _ton_' of homework to do before we came to Hyda, anyway?"

"But. . .I. . ." His jaw worked a bit as he scrambled for a defense, before he popped out of his seat to stand in front of her. "But. . .I was fighting so well today! And I leveled up a lot too, you know." It was hard to keep the excitement out of his pleading tones. The slightly narrowed look of her eyes, and the continued presence of the pout, told him it was not appreciated.

"Yeah, yeah. How nice for you."

"Huh. Someone's in a bad mood today."

The change of tactics with its slightly teasing tone did not work, and Sophia looked pointedly away. "What do you expect? You'd rather play silly games than hang out at the beach with me!"

He decided to try again. Looking down, he lowered his voice slightly, and bit his lip in a passably apologetic manner. . .for a child, perhaps. ". . .Sophia?"

"Hmph!" The cold shoulder elevated a level as she not only turned her head from him but stood up and walked away from the fountain a few steps; leaving her back to him. Her sweater was wet in the back still, and had ridden up slightly over her swimsuit. It was blue, pale blue, because it had always been that way. It would be modest and one piece, and there would be a pink heart on the front between her small breasts. It was the kind of thing only a little girl would wear, or a college student who still called her favorite pink by the name of a child's lipstick and drew endearingly malproportioned stick-cats beside her signature and still, sometimes, dotted her 'i's with small hearts if she was not careful not to. The boy came up behind her as timidly as if he approached a wild animal.

"You aren't. . .mad, are you?"

"I'm not mad!" But she said it in a way that meant she was, she was _very mad_, and that he had gone and done something even worse than debunking the sacred lipstick and now must be punished. Unless of course he could make her happy again.

"Ah. . .Do you. . ." He paused, lowering the drink and swinging around in front of her again, this time with an ingratiating smile. "Do you wanna go to the beach?"

But she had slipped past him and stalked away again even as he made his hopeful proposal, head still turned up and away. And voice still dripping with accusatory, injured scorn. "I swam enough. While _somebody _I know was having the time of his life, playing games all by himself!" And if he likes it that much, that big mean jerk, he can keep doing it for the rest of the week.

He refused to take the hint. "So. . .do you wanna take a walk through the hotel?" Swinging around in front of her again, he grimaced slightly at the impatient way she turned away--again--and put her hands on her hips, glaring stolidly at the wall. He decided it was time to break out the big guns. Because they always worked, and he was really in it now. He put his hands on Sophia's shoulders and turned her towards himself, assuming the most guilty, puppy-eyed expression of pleading he had perfected after years of trial and error. "I bet it'll be fun. Right? What do you say? C'mon Sophia. . .please? Pretty please?"

"Wellll. . ." She looked up at him critically, but the smile was coming through onto her small pretty mouth again, and the petulance was seeping out of her pretty grey eyes behind the long lashes. She knew she had won, but she was used to that. There was something very self assured in the way she tilted her head and finally smiled up at him as she leaned in, speaking as though she were a queen imparting some massive favor on a commoner. "If you want to hang out with me _that badly_ I _guess_ it's all right. . ."

"Great!" He grinned, offering his hand to her, and some slightly squeamish corner of his masculinity wondered if it wasn't a bad sign that he considered Sophia's smug allowance a grand victory. Most of him was just glad she wouldn't be snubbing him for the rest of the day, or week, or however long it took her to decide he could be forgiven. Once it had been a month, when he had told her it was silly to wash down a burger and box of cookies with diet soda and been accused of calling her fat. "Let's go. Time's a-wastin'!"

Sophia giggled, and took his hand.


	2. 01

**DISCLAIMER:** I, The Mad Poet, do not own any Star Ocean game, publication, or related character. I am a poor fan with too much time on my hands with no money, so don't sue me. This novelization is being written solely for my own sick, twisted amusement; and views expressed herein do not reflect those of the original creators. Do not expect a replica of the game—I am One Sick Puppy. By that token, the following fanfiction and all original concepts therein are my own; do not steal them because I will find out and beat you death with a crowbar. I know where you sleep.

Expect explicit violence, mature themes, politics, crude and/or ethnic jokes, lots of prejudice, more violence, mindgames, a reality check, and enough religious references to choke a Mormon choir.

Flames will be used to work on my tan.

Much credit, love, and general adoration to Batpig Sexgod, who has helped me with so much of this—including putting up with that awful excuse for an SO game long enough to start this.

* * *

**

* * *

**

THOU SHALT NOT

_"And the Lord said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and the beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them."_

_-Genesis 6:7_

**01**

Almost an hour later, time was still wasting away.

The same unspecific boy, though he could have been another, leaned against the creamy beige-on-eggshell walls of the hotel's upstairs hallway outside of a door marked one-oh-five, into which Sophia had dissapeared quite some time ago. He himself had already showered and changed his clothes--similar clothes, though the shorts were slightly darker and this version of the white zip-down sported a black trim and a collar and two pockets which were more for show than function--and now let his head fall back onto his shoulder as he nearly dozed in the pleasantly modulated heat. Someone passing by to their own room looked him over and chuckled faintly, shaking their heads as he nodded to vague and oblivious thoughts. First and foremost, however, was the thought that only a girl could have taken so long to wash and change. He decided that she was probably making him wait on purpose, and that he probably deserved it.

Simultaneous with that but before he could take it back was the hushed whisper of the door opening. Sophia touched his shoulder, and giggled. "Hi Fayt. Sleeping?"

"Noooo. . ." It was a singularly odd name, not at all generic or average in this modern and practical society with its quiet and practical names, but it was in fact the same boy who answered to it; perhaps his only personal claim to complete individuality. He opened his eyes and pushed away from the wall, looking at Sophia wryly. She had changed into her favorite jeans, which hugged the hips she was not entirely happy with but he humbly thought added a much-needed feminine curve to her girlish figure, and a tank top with straps which barely qualified as such. The jeans were faded and missing their button; the top was that same artificial peppermint color but not so faded as the sweater of before. They left a thin strip of her belly exposed, and its paleness looked odd beside the places she had tanned. Somehow, it made him smile. "But I was thinking about it. What took you so long? I mean. . .what were you _doing_ all that time?"

"Just changing. I didn't take that long, did I?" She looked slightly hurt again, slightly put out, and tucked her hands behind herself to blink innocently up at him. It broke in a moment around a grin as she leaned forward. "Be-_sides_. You kept me waiting. . .for how long? Serves you right!"

Sophia was turning into a mind reader. Fayt grimaced a little again, lifting a hand to rub the back of his neck sheepishly. "Right, right. . ."

She giggled again. Sometimes Fayt had to wonder if she was laughing with him, or just at him; but she took his arm and swung about to one side of him, eyes crinkled faintly with humor, and it didn't really matter when she put it _that _way. "So. Shall we?"

He took a step to keep up with her, laughing himself now. "Okay. Just don't yank my arm off!"

"Oh, you big baby. Between the sports and the simulators, I thought you were supposed to be some kind of muscle-man." Still, she released her hold, letting her hand slip down into his again as they headed down the long peaceful hall to the interior transporters. "I'm surprised you have time left to study in."

"Hey now. . .what's that supposed to mean?"

"Well, nothing. Just. . .You know, with uncle Robert and aunt Ryoko, we've got some pretty big shoes to fill. And _you _don't exactly spend a lot of your free time on schoolwork--"

"Schoolwork is meant for school!" He protested, looking down at her with a faint frown now tugging at his mouth. "Besides. Who said we had to follow in my parents' footsteps? They're their own people, Sophia. And so are we."

"Oh, I know that!" She looked up at him, saw his frown, and drew her own brows together slightly. It was obvious that she wanted to say something without shattering the levity of the afternoon but could not quite figure out how, and that it frustrated her. "Just. . .Oh, Fayt. We're stuck in the shadows of the galaxy's greatest genomorphists. And symbology's an awfully complicated field if you don't really care."

"I care." Fayt realized that he sounded a little defensive, but he sort of felt that way as well. Seated comfortably in the passing center of his class ranking, Fayt was aware of shamelessly unwhispered rumors that his grades were buoyed by his father's prestigious rank and name. They were not of course--he worked very hard to hold that high 'C'--and so persistent though they were the rumors bothered him less and with less regularity than the occaisional, purely spontaneous 'change your major you slacker' lectures from Sophia. "I do care. I think it's a really interesting field of study. I mean, come on. It's. . .magic. It's the stuff stories and dreams and games and every mythology that's ever been is made of. I'm just not worried about who I'm as good as or better than, that's all. After all, it's not spacetime theory--there aren't a lot of giant breakthroughs to be made anymore. Nobody makes a name for themselves on symbology these days. And that's fine by me."

"You don't care about much of anything, do you. I just can't imagine you turning into some mousy little researcher somewhere." She nudged him with her elbow. "You'd have to give up all your games for that, you know. No more VR. No more basketball. Come on, Fayt. . . Don't you ever feel you should aspire to anything? Isn't there anything you _want_ out of life?"

He considered that deeply for a moment, pausing as the transport room door opened automatically at their approach. He considered telling her he wanted her to stop sounding like his mother and have a little bit of faith in him. He considered telling her that just wasn't fair. He considered, very briefly, grabbing her and shaking her and asking where the hell she got off saying that to him, little miss scholarship at seventeen. Instead, he turned her with their joined hands until she faced him, and took hold of her other one as well. ". . .Yes. Yes there is. You know what I want very, very much out of life?"

"Hmn? What's that?"

Lifting their hands up he grinned, turning to pull her along as he backed into the transport room with its lines of sleek, tiny interior units pressed against walls between the potted plants. "_I_ want to take a long pleasant walk through the hotel with beautiful spacetime theorist Sophia Esteed, who will someday--probably before graduation--solve the mysteries of Styx and the fourth dimension wall, and be much too famous and busy to waste her day with a sorry bum like me."

"Oh, I will not!" This of course had exactly the desired effect and Sophia laughed, releasing Fayt's hands to shove him lightly. The last narrow look of irritation lingering from before had melted effectively from her eyes and he was forgiven, now, of all his male transgressions. Until next time, at least. "Silly. Just get in the transporter."

He did, of course, relieved to have escaped any possible retribution later and the inevitable motivational speech in one fell swoop. There were only two buttons on this particular transport unit--for the second and ground floors--so the selection was simple. He touched the flat lightpanel beneath his hand and watched it ripple around his finger, before he and his hand vanished into a shimmering vertigo of white light. Watched it reappear again in the same. It left him with a faint chill in the center of his skull, as transport usually did, but it was such an inherent part of his life that Fayt ignored it by now. Here, it was only noticable because of the brilliantly warm weather. He shook his head faintly to clear it and stepped out of the unit, jogging slightly ahead of Sophia as she stepped out of her own transporter and then turning to walk backwards, facing her, as he went through the automatic door.

"So. Is there anywhere you really want to see?" Looking around the hallways--so much wider here on the ground floor, which housed the lobby and conference center and rec room and myriad other facilities--Fayt saw nothing of particular interest to _him_, but did not say so. Towards the end of the hall in the long threads of light tossed through the glassy outer walls a tall, thin and vaguely slanted man of patrician features was spouting melodramatic pseudo-poetry to a startled looking woman as she passed by, and stopped to stare at him in a sort of morbid fascination. Fayt too paused as he went on in raptures about the sealed power of good and evil behind the closed door he stood before, but shrugged and continued as Sophia passed him by. ". . .Wow. What was his problem?"

"Huh? Oh. I think he's Alphalian." She paused, and giggled. "Which would explain why he thinks that storage closet he's 'guarding' is the door between here and Daemonium. There are some funny people in the galaxy, aren't there?"

"Oh, that was mean Sophia. Alphalian's aren't crazy--just. . .self-absorbed." He grinned. "And trapped in a giant, badly-written eighteenth century stageplay."

"So they're crazy."

"Delusional."

". . .Fayt, if you thought God had sent you to a vacation resort to protect the mortal realm from celestial damnation in the closet, you would be crazy."

"But at least I'd be ambitious."

"No," She said patiently, tilting her head to him, "you would be _crazy_. Hey, what's this room here?" Sophia referred to a door depressed back into the last bit of solid wall before giving way to glass and the sprawling view outside. It was a quaint door, not hydraulic or electric but bearing a small brassy colored knob and painted across the surface to look like wood. Hidden in the outstretched fronds of two massive plants set at either side of it, it was nearly invisble except for the bright, cheery glint of the metal handle.

Stopping, Fayt walked to the door and reached out, pushing the branches aside. Beside the false wood of the door, another bright plaque proclaimed it to be the Entertainment Room. Which told him absolutely nothing. ". . .I don't know." He reached for the handle.

"Is it okay to just. . .go in?"

"Sure it is. Everything on the ground floor is either public domain or marked employees only. Besides, with a name like 'Entertainment Room' how could it be off-limits?" He looked back at her, smiling reassuringly, and just teasing enough. ". . .Where's your sense of adventure?"

"If it's not off-limits, you probably don't think it's a real adventure." Still, when he did not proceed she sighed, and waved him on. "Well? Let's take a look. If they want us to keep out I guess it'll be locked."

Victory. Fayt twisted the knob and pushed it open, turning to look back at Sophia over his shoulder as he began to step inside. "Right. That's the spiri--"

"Hey hey _hey_!" From somewhere around the level of his waist came the new voice, high and flighty and chirping as a bird but not by any means quiet--it was a hard voice to ignore and he turned quickly, jerking back as he did so when a bounding bundle of dark skin and bright clothing skidded to a halt before him with a jingle of bells and bangles. "Whaaaaat's this? Who are you? This is the Rossetti's dressing room you know!" Eyes. Very large, very green eyes peered up at him critically, and they defined the overwhelming nature of the child in a stark first impression. She was small, her skin a milk-and-coffee dark with cream-colored hair pulled into a collection of braids and curls and ponytails by strings of beads and golden rings. Dressed in bright shades of pink and red and black, weighted and adorned by bells of all sizes and manners with her small fingers hidden beneath rings and her wrists buried in fat bracelets, Fayt found he did not know what to do or say in the face of the strange, chirping gypsy child. He blinked at her, as Sophia peered around his shoulder to do the same, and the girl suddenly clapped her hands. The sound of her palms meeting was drowned by the jingle and click of her bizarre ensemble.

"_Oh_! Oh oh, I know! You want my autograph, don't you? Yes! Oh, well, I guess I have to keep the fans happy you know. But you're lucky--usually I'd be mad, _so mad_ if someone came barging in like that but you know you're kinda cute so I'll make a' exception this time. Okay?" She clasped her hands behind her, and in front of her, and then behind her again as she bounced and rocked on her feet, all critcism gone and a laugh on her tiny lips.

Fayt began to take a step back, not really wanting to deal with someone who clearly, very clearly was either hyped out on far too many synthetic sweeteners or just wasn't entirely there, but Sophia behind him pushed him forward again. "Where's your sense of adventure, Fayt?"

Not fair. That absolutely. Positively. _Was not fair_. There was a distinct reason he did not like being trapped between two girls, and age did not matter--Sophia and his mother had ganged up on him together far too often for him to believe that it did. Looking around desperately for an exit, seeing only the brightly lit room beyond the child--it was filled with mirrors, with crates and boxes and bright stage props, with oddly-dressed figures ranging from the child before him to a hulking mountain of a man at the back wall, his bald head gleaming in the light as he shifted weighty objects from one locale to the other. He paused, and offered Fayt a dim but friendly smile, and went back to work. No help there. The boy cleared his throat. "Uhm. . .they. . .we. . .uh, you said the Rossettis. . .?"

"What's this? All this way and you don't even know the troupe's name?" Her cheeks puffed out in an exaggerated sigh, and she reached up to snatch his hand, tugging him forward. "Rossetti, Rossetti! Don't go forgetting it now! Say, what's your name, huh? What's your name?"

Bewildered, he allowed himself to be tugged forward. It did not help that Sophia, giggling at the trouble his curiousity had landed him in, pushed him along. "It's. . .Fayt, but. . ."

"And Sophia. I'm Sophia."

"Right, Right! Hey, hold still okay?" The lively girl seemed to ignore Sophia except to flash her a smile of dazzlingly white teeth in that dark face as she flounced around to Fayt's back. He heard a light 'popping' noise, and she tugged on the bottom of his shirt.

"Huh? Wha--?" As Fayt tried to twist his body around enough to see just what, exactly, was going on behind him he heard Sophia muffle a squeak which was either shock or laughter, and felt a light, clumsy pressure slide roughly along the bottom of the shirt beside the girl's grip.

"To. . .my. . .dar-ling. . .Fayt. . . From the Fairy of Illusions, Peppita Rossetti. . .and. . .that's. . .it!" The pop was repeated, and the girl clapped again, sounding quite proud and satisfied with herself. "All done! Isn't it wonderful?" Stepping out the way, she gestured with a flourish to the back of Fayt's shirt.

Sophia bit her lip, shaking her head. "What did you--"

"_Hey_!" Fayt had finally managed to get a glimpse of the travesty inflicted upon his favorite shirt. Across the bottom, in fat, clumsily straggling black marker lines, an ugly and lopsided smiling face had been drawn, and beneath it lines which may or may not have been something _resembling_ a signature, if viewed right-side up, but from his vantage point looked an awful lot more like a kindergartener's version of an explosion in ink. "You can't just draw on people's shirts like that!"

Suddenly, quite a bit of the exuberance drained out of the girl, and she looked vaguely uncertain. Her pearly smile faltered. "Huh. . .? What? But, I thought you wanted my autograph?"

For Sophia, the novelty seemed to have worn off of the encounter. She put a hand on her hip and wagged one finger at the little girl reprovingly. "Nobody said anything about wanting any autographs! You owe Fayt an apology for that."

"But. . .huh?" She tilted her head at the both of them, bobbing up on the toes of her decorated shoes and twisting them on the floor slightly, until her stance became pigeon-toed and sheepish. "I mean, but, what--I thought. . .uhm. Then you. . .want my mama's autograph? Or my papa's?" Now she looked down, face and voice falling until she nearly mumbled to herself, sounding abject and small. Despite the insult of his shirt, Fayt found himself feeling almost sorry for her. "You. . .you can't want Gonnella the Clown's autograph more than mine. . .or Ursus the Strongman's. . .right?"

"No. . ." Not knowing who any of those people were, Fayt shook his head in a wholly honest denial. "We're not really looking for anyone's autograph, actually."

Looking up at him in a way that was almost shy, the girl seemed to consider this for a moment before lowering onto her heels, and bouncing up again. As if by some magic, she was rejuvenated. "Huh! Well! What then. . .heeeeey." Now she wandered around him in a wide circle, and Fayt turned with her warily. He did not want to be written on again. The girl, however, was eyeing him with suspicion. "Are you a salseman? Or. . .no, actually, you don't look like you've done an an honest day's work in your life. So! I know!" Her remark about an honest day's work set Sophia to giggling all over again, and Fayt shot her a dirty look. But the girl had stopped, and was pointing at him accusingly with her weighted fingers. Her other hand was planted firmly on her hip, and her feet spread in a wide brace as if she meant to push him out. "You're here to collect on a loan! That's it, isn't it! Well you're too early--they promised, that loan's good 'til next month. They _promised_!"

"No. . .no!" Lifting his hands defensively, Fayt backed away a step, shaking his head again. "Look, you've got it all wrong. Who are the Rossettis, anyway? And what's with this 'Fairy of Illusion' stuff?"

"Hummmmn. . .okay." She lowered her finger slowly, looking from Fayt to Sophia, and back to Fayt again. "Sooooo, you two are just lost?"

"Well, we're not really lost--"

"Oh no! Then you're robbers!"

"No!" He stepped back again, bumping the door frame, as she swung her arm at him. The tiny hand itself was less threatening than the long drape of red fabric hanging from one fat bangle, and the massive bead at the end of it. He did not want to be smacked around by five pounds of costume jewelry. "We're not that either!"

"Then what _are_ you? You're not one of my fans, you're not here to collect on our loan, you're not lost. . ." She stomped her foot impatiently. "So just what do you think you're doing barging into our room like this!"

"Well, um. . ." He glanced back to Sophia--who only shrugged helplessly--and then looked back to the girl. Not certain what to say, Fayt rubbed at the back of his neck and went with apology. "I'm sorry for barging into your room. It looked like just a part of the facilities, and we were just taking a little walk to check the place out, so we were curious. . .right, Sophia?"

Sophia nodded. "Mm-hmn."

The girl looked up at them incredulously, mouth set in an angled line. ". . .A walk."

"That's right." Fayt nodded to her again, relieved that the crisis seemed to be winding down. "A walk."

There was silence for a moment, as the girl stretched her hands up abover her head and turned a slow, lazy cirlce on her heel. "Barging into people's rooms. ..isn't called. . .taking. . .a. . ._walk!_" She stomped down again on the last word, pointing at Fayt once more so violently that the giant bead-and-bangle swung up again, nearly smacking him in the chest before it looped over the child's arm instead. "That's for burglars! Or lost kids, or stalkers, or groupies, or--"

"Uh, well, okay. Then. . .We're lost."

Sophia leaned forward, reaching out to touch his arm as she whispered urgently. "Let's just get out of here, Fayt."

He shifted so that he was in the doorway itself instead of backed against the frame, and nodded. "Good idea. . ."

This time, the gypsy girl seemed disinclined to intterupt them. She sniffled, and with a heavy sigh--and accompanying clank and jangle--sank down to a crouch on the ground, drawing slow dejected squiggles on the floor between her feet with one finger. "So you really _were_ just lost. That explains it. And here I thought you were my very first fan. . ." She paused in her invisible art to wrap her arms around her thin knees, and shook her head. "But. . .it's not like I've performed yet. I guess it did seem a little strange. Gosh, I'm so stupid. . ."

The two students exchanged a helpless glance. Fayt couldn't have simply left the girl like that, looking as though she was about to cry, any more than Sophia would have let him do so. And they both knew it. And so, since it was Fayt whose words however misunderstood had made her miserable, it was Fayt who had to make it better. He stepped back towards the girl, and dropped into a crouch of his own before her. ". . .You're a performer?"

"Uh-huh. That's right. We're the Rossetti Troupe. . ." Again, life seemed charged back into her like current through a wire, and she bounded to her feet with a flourishing, surprisingly elegant pirouette which she closed with a sweeping bow and dramatic pose. ". . .And we bring you a fleeting vision of the future! I'm your fairy guide, Peppita Rossetti!"

Fayt blinked at her.

". . .If you need it in plain Terran, we're a circus troupe." She flapped her arms slightly in exasperation, before clasping them behind her and smiling at him again. "And I. . .am sort of the host."

He decided, fixed with those big bright eyes and that big white grin, shoulders up ready to defend her position and dark cheeks faintly colored with an uncertain but steadfast childish pride, that this Peppita Rossetti was quite nearly the most singularly endearing child he had ever seen. . .at least, when she wasn't ruining his clothes or trying to beat him with jewelry or calling him a robber. He grinned back at her. "Oh. So this shirt with your signature's going to be worth something then?"

"Well of course! It's the first autograph I ever signed, you know!"

"The first? Now, I don't believe that."

"Yup. Tomorrow's my debut, but in six months, why, you could buy a. . ." She looked around the room for something suitably costly and then settled for turning back to him and gesturing broadly--a sweeping, all-encompasing whoosh of her tiny arms. "You could buy a whole _planet_ with that shirt!"

Biting his lip to hold back a laugh at her solemnity, Fayt stood up and put a hand on his hip. "Oh yeah? _Amazing_. An entire planet. I guess I'll have to take good care of it won't I."

She seemed elated for a second before her face fell into suspicion again. "Hey.. .you don't believe me. . .?"

"No, I do. I really do." He paused, then shrugged and took a chance by putting a hand on her head and ruffling what little of the thick creamy hair was loose enough to be mussed. "I'm sure you'll be dynamite on the stage."

Peppita giggled, and stuck out her tongue slightly, but did not protest the treatment. "Hee. . .thanks! And you know, I'm in such a good mood, so I'll give this little present to you! A magical gift from the beautiful fairy Peppita to you, her first fan!" With another flourish--her ability to catch the eye, at least, was well-assured--Peppita produced from seemingly nowhere but probably the nest of bangles on her arm a thin white slip. She held it out, so bright against her skin the elegant scrawl of words on its surface seemed to leap from the cardstock.

Fayt took it with a faint feeling of puzzlement. It intensified when he read the script, made out in myriad languages, which invited him to an evening of magic and mystery, and a fleeting glimpse of the beautiful future. "A. . .ticket?"

"Yeah, for our show tomorrow!" She pointed at him again, not accusing this time but insistent. "You'd better not miss it, Fayt! After you see us do our thing, you'll _really_ want to treasure that autograph! For the rest of your life, even!"

He turned halfway in the door to show the ticket to Sophia, who took it from him to run her hand across the surface in a marvel at the strange texture--thick as stock and smooth as vellum. It made her smile. "What pretty writing. . ."

"It's my mama's." She nodded proudly. "So, you'll be there? Promise?"

This time, it was Sophia who answered her. "Of course we will. Right, Fayt?"

"Without a doubt. Thank you, Peppita. I'm really looking forward to the show."

"Great!" With a last flounce and flourish she bounded away from them, returning to whatever she had been occupied with before their unauthorized entry with a wave tossed over the shoulder. They were, apparently, dismissed. "See you later, Fayt! Sophia! And don't forget the show!"

Free at last, the two returned to the peaceful saftey of the hall. Heaving identical sighs of relief, they stared at each other for a moment in silence.

Sophia broke it with a giggle. "Well, that was certainly an _adventure. _Serves you right, Fayt"

"What? What do you mean, 'serves me right'? Look, we got a free ticket out of it, didn't we?" Which only made Sophia laugh harder. Defensive though he tried to remain, it was difficult to stay even playfully serious in the face of her light, infectious giggling. He grinned, and waved the ticket triumphantly for a moment before tucking it into his pocket. ". . .Besides. She was a cute kid. I'm sure she'll steal the show. Now come on. Let's walk some more."

Still giggling softly, slightly breathlessly as she took up a place beside him, Sophia shook her head. "You don't want to change your shirt?"

"Call it 'advertising'." He _was_ still a little sore about the shirt--for all that it was exactly like his others, it was his favorite--but he would get over it and the marker, hopefully, would wash out. He turned his head to watch the beach far below pass by as they walked the length of the glass external wall. His parents, probably, were down there somewhere; and that alone had been a good enough reason not to join Sophia on the beach though he would not have admitted it. His mother would have ribbed him endlessly about finally leaving his games and getting some sun. After that, who knew where the lectures would turn? She still talked to him as though he were a child. "Besides, everything we want to see is down here."

"All right." Sophia paused, leaning over a particularly large and vibrant spray of flowers in a potted plant, and then jogged slightly to catch up when Fayt did not stop as well. ". . .But what do we want to see?"

"Don't know. We could. . ." He looked around, realizing that no, he did _not_ have a plan. They passed the door to the lounge as it slid open and discharged a whining boy and his mother--who, in the time-honored universal manner of females in general, chided him for wasting his time on silly games--and he was struck by sudden inspiration. Taking Sophia's hand, he stopped, and tugged her back slightly. "Here. We could go to the lounge."

Where the games were. Which Sophia knew. She looked at him suspiciously. "Fayt. . ."

The boy raised his hands in submission. "I was just thinking we could check to see if the hotel had any events scheduled."

Considerately, she looked him up and down, as though the truth would be printed plainly somewhere on his person. It was not, and in the end she only snorted faintly. "Hmph. Liar. All right, but if we see anything we _are_ going to go do it you know."

"Gotcha." Before she could change her mind Fayt had her hand again, and pulled her back towards the lobby until she lengthened her steps slightly so that he simply held on to her--in case she decided to get away. Because of course she _was_ right, and he did have an ulterior motive in the form of some very new updates in the combat simulators which he had just remembered. He had not had a chance to try them, because Sophia had come in on him with her fiery wrath while he was taking a break. It did not seem like the kind of thing she would have approved of, but Fayt thought that he might, maybe, if he handled things _just so_, be able to talk her into letting him play some more.

The door hissed open and he was once again immersed in the skylighted brightness of the lounge with its large fountain and myriad screens, displaying everything from cartoons to movies to the latest news broadcasts. At each corner of the room he knew would be a door marked Simulation Center for the familiar cool darkness of the virtual reality systems, but it was a little early for that yet and Sophia, in any case, was dragging him fixedly away from them towards the information terminal against the wall. Obviously she knew him far too well because when she stopped in front of the terminal and stepped aside to allow him the honors, she fixed him a stern glare. "Okay, check it out. But _no_ keypad games!"

". . .Sophia, I'm hurt. I told you I wanted to look something up for us to spend time together on." And besides, he didn't even _like_ keypad or joystick games. But a cursory glance of the hotel's schedueled events showed nothing of even vague interest to either of them. Tapping a few buttons on the shimmering touchpad, he called up the news instead. The image of an orbital ring of wreckage floating serenely through the starbelt came up to the screen, and the computer newscaster's pleasant but slightly artifcial voice cued up; warm and androgynous.

". . .Federation Station Seventeen, lost but not forgotten. Seven years ago to the day, the people of the Federation Station number seventeen were slaughtered during an attack by the Aldian Empire. The families of the deceased staged a memorial in Lambda sector where Station seventeen once orbited. They also voiced their hopes for a swift end to the war, and some even seriously questioned the Federation government's decision not to cease hostilities. Federation spokeseperson--"

"Fayt, what are you doing now?"

He frowned, and clicked to the next news story. "Just checking the news. I mean, I might as well." He had forgotten about station seventeen--or, not forgotten maybe but certainly not remembered. It was something distant to him, though important enough he supposed. It was hard to remember sometimes, so far away from the front, that they were still in the bitter center of a sixty-year conflict with a cruel and unrelenting enemy. It was hard to worry when it never touched him.

The next news was no better, though he only caught a moment of it and did not particularly care as he flipped by; a brief glimpse of mayhem and a snippet of dialouge catching in his mind as the digital anchorperson serenely described yet another uprising in Zeta Sector. "--Rezerbian Prime Minister Sergeant Brooklund issued a statement asserting that such actions interfered with the planet's internal affairs and refused to allow the peacekeeping force to enter their territory. All parties deny the involvement of Klaus-based anti-Federation terrorist group Quark. However, though no information indicating--" What a mess _that_ was. He shook his head. It was _always_ a mess in Zeta Sector, between the freewheeling, lawless parasites of Rezerb and the stubborn Klausians. He didn't even_ know _what was wrong with the Klausians, who otherwise might have been decent enough except that while not enemies of the Federation as a whole they by and large despised the institution and would have no part of it. The entire sector, it seemed, was filled with lunatics and terrorists.

The next two stories were of even less interest, and he passed over them without even noticing. The long sweeping image of a Federation battleship was what finally caught his eye again, enrapturing some deep masculine draw to all that shone and shot things so deeply that he barely heard the voice continuing onward. He caught in passing that the ship was called Aquaelie, and that it had seen several battles against Aldian, and was the oldest ship in the fleet. Just prior to its retirement it had instead been reoutfitted with the latest model Creation Engines and any number of new weaponries, and put back into service. Fayt found himself glad of it, and took his fingers from the keypad to touch the screen instead. It was a beautiful ship. Someday, maybe, he hoped to see it or something like it in person. He had never seen a real battleship, after all. Only educational simulations and vidscreens.

Clicking past a few more news briefs, Fayt decided there was nothing more to be seen and checked the weather instead. He glanced to Sophia, who was fidgeting from foot to foot impatiently, hands behind her back. Far less interested in the news than even he, she had taken to watching a movie on one of the screens set about the wall. ". . .Hey, Sophia."

"What? Are you done yet, Fayt?" She looked back to him briefly, and then let her attention drift back to the movie screen, where an unrealistically attractive young couple was taking in the sights of some obscure but beautiful planet with a calculated amount of equally unrealistic comic hijinks. "Let's go. There's nothing interesting in here."

"Well. . .Just, I'm checking the weather. It says here tomorrow's supposed to be clear--"

"Of course it is! This is _Hyda_."

". . .Uh, yeah. But around four there might be some squalls. You know, tropical weather." He paused, waiting until he had her attention again. Somehow, Fayt knew he was going to regret his next words. But he wanted to play some more without putting himself in the line of fire--that meant a little bit of sucking up and bowing down. It was inevitable. "So. . .I figured maybe you and I should just go shopping that afternoon."

Sophia brightened instantly, latching onto his arm again. "Oh, do you mean that? Really? I thought you _hated_ shopping, Fayt!"

He did. He absolutely loathed shopping, especially with Sophia because what it really meant was that she would buy a lot of things and he would carry a lot of bags. But he wasn't going to _say_ that. He was going to smile, and shrug, and humor her--not just because he wanted something out of her good mood, either. The trip would only last so much longer, after all, and Sophia still hadn't bought any souveniers for her parents back on earth. It was a pity they hadn't been able to come, because Fayt liked uncle Clive quite a bit more than any of his_ real _uncles, but work had come up and in the end only Sophia had been able to come. He wondered if she didn't feel a little lonely because of it. ". . .Of course not. How could I hate shopping with you?"

"I make you carry so much though."

"Yeah, well. . .I'm tough. All those simulations have got me pretty strong, you know."

"Oh. . .you and your games." She rolled her eyes, and stepped away to cross her arms over her chest. "It always comes back to games. Keep playing them all the time like that you'll be nothing but some brainless musclebound freak."

Fayt considered that for a moment, before nudging her slightly. It was enough of an in for him. "Well. . .why don't you give it try yourself, Sophia? You might decide it's really fun."

"What?" The suggestion seemed to genuinely startle her, and for a moment Sophia had nothing to say. She looked away slightly, arms falling slowly to her sides. "But. . .don't you play on those. . .combat simulators? Don't you have to. . .fight?" She shook her head, sounding uncertain and maybe even just a little bit frightened. "No can do. . .I. . .don't like those kind of games."

"Don't worry. I'll protect you." As if to emphasize this fact he put an arm around her shoulders and squeezed slightly, reassuringly. Hopefully Sophia would not notice that he was using it to guide her towards the nearest simulation chamber, conveniently and blessedly unoccupied.

She looked up at him, brows drawn faintly in worry. "But. . ."

"I'd never let you do anything dangerous, I promise. C'mon, just try it once Sophia. We can start at an easy level and everything. You can even have a character with symbology, so you can attack at a distance and don't even have to get close to the fighting. Okay?"

"Y. . .Yeah. Well. . .It won't. . .uhm. . .hurt, will it?" At about that point they came upon the entrance--she looked at it as though it were the maw of some huge, hungry animal waiting to swallow her. "I mean--"

"Of course not." Fairly sure he had won--and much more easily than he had expected--Fayt gave Sophia's shoulder a parting squeeze and released her to enter their IDs onto the panel outside the chamber. "Beginner's level doesn't hurt at all. It just tingles a little. It almost tickles." Which was a slight exageration, but it brought the tiny hint of a smile back onto Sophia's face, so that was all right.

". . .Okay. I guess I'll give a try. _One_ try."

"Of course." A last touch to the keypad slid the door open easily, letting out a breath of cool stimulant-damp air from the dark blue chamber. "It's easy then. We just go in and it's almost all ready." He was actually rather proud that Sophia went in all on her own, needing only a faint nudge to prompt her. He followed her and the door closed behind them, immersing the pair in indigo darkness for a moment before a soft green glow threw ghostly illumination acros the wide, deep-bellied room with its flat projective walls. A computer voice chimed in as well--as bland and androgynous and artificially pleasant as the one which announced the news on the information terminals.

"Welcome. You have selected the Battle Simulator. Please set Battle System Parameters."

Sophia fidgeted, and leaned against Fayt's arm. "What does that mean?"

"Ah. . ." Fayt grimaced faintly. "It means we should start from the beginning. Do you want to look at the instructions?"

"I don't know. . .Should I?"

"If you want to have any fun. Computer, display instructions."

Nodding at the machine's programmed affirmation, Sophia reached up, dragging her finger along the translucent square of aqua green which appeared before her, lips moving silently as she scanned the simple directions. It was not a complicated system, and she finished it quickly. The computer prompted them with a question-- "The user Sophia Esteed new to this system. Create a new character?"--and after a brief glance to Sophia's puzzled face, Fayt shook his head. She would never play again, whether she enjoyed herself or not, on the simple principle of the matter. There was no point in going through the entire selection process.

". . .No. Computer, use pregenerated system characters for Sophia Esteed this session."

Silence, and a low mechanized humming as this was processed. "Player one: Fayt Leingod. Character: Sword Master Adonis Klein. User level: AAA. Player two: Sophia Esteed. Character: Flare Witch Cecilia Femina. User level: E. Battlefield: Remote City of Listia. Monster level: E. Setup complete. Continue?"

Again, Sophia fidgeted slightly. ". . .Monsters?"

"Well you don't want to fight something that looks like another person, do you?" Wide-eyed, she shook her head. ". . .Okay. Computer, we're ready."

"Preparing to commence. This Simulation System may abort a session if it detects that player safety is at risk or--"

"I already know that. Just start the simulation."

The machine adjusted to his terse interruption far more serenely than any living being would have done; dialouge flowing seamlessly from one statement to the next as the air heated with the activation of airborne stimulants and the VR projectors roughened the smooth ground beneath them. "Confirmed. Commencing game--please enjoy your session."

The walls seemed to expand, flowing out into a dimly lit maze of walls and steps and crumbled buildings. There was a sense of unreality to it all, a strange world unfolding before his very eyes, which Fayt never tired of; a dreamlike allure to the sudden illusional weight of armor about his shoulders and the simulated heft of a sword in his hands--not some featherweight phasegun but a _weapon, _which made him feel less like a boy and student in the age of complete knowledge and more like a man, a real man of the dark ages. A rough-edged vigilante, perhaps, on some underdeveloped planet in the far reaches of the galaxy where technology had no roots and magic no science; where heroes worked with their hands. If the beginner's level lightened the load more than he was used to these days, and if it left a harshly digital edge upon the immersively projected environment, he did not let it invade on his fantasy. Let Sophia be comforted by the reminders of technology and its computer-voiced safety net. He, for now, would be Adonis.

From around the jagged corner of a broken wall came a chitnous clicking, and a large creature--their monster, a black stag beetle the size of a german sheperd with huge snapping mandibles and its digital framework showing through in blatant green wireframe chunks as if to prove it harmless. Sophia uttered a brief, strangely inhuman squeal of fear as two more entered, one in flight with its wings buzzing angrily before it landed, at the left and right of them. She clung to Fayt's arm. "Oh my god . .they're. . .they're--"

"Not real, Sophia. They're not real, they can't hurt you, and I'm here to protect you." It felt good to say the words in a place where it felt like there was something real and genuine to protect her _from_, even if that something could do her no real harm. Swordsman Adonis Klein, after all, would not have seen projections. He would have seen monstrous creatures with crushing jaws. "It's okay. Now just like the instructions said--how do you fight them? If you fight them, they go away. See, if you let go I can show you. Okay?"

She released his arm gingerly, reluctant to move away but eager to be rid of the giant insects and slightly torn between the two impulses. Rather than attacking herself, though, she simply clutched at the long decorative rod the system had provided her character with. She looked small and helpless, in the false world of Listia, and for a moment Fayt felt a pang of guilt at bringing her into this--which was not, after all, her kind of game. She looked small and helpless and for the briefest, most puzzling of moments a deep sense of foreboding washed over him, a horrible despair which weakened his knees and let his readied blade, so long and bright and clean, dip wavering towards the ground.

It passed quickly.

Shaking his head to clear the clinging fog of that horrible sensation--he had played too hard earlier, was all; his mind and muscles were worn was his problem--Fayt lifted his sword again and with a shout charged the nearest of the creatures as it approached. The weapon came down with a rush of air to meet the beetle as it rose, rearing to scratch at him with fat jagged legs and and snap with those horrible jaws; crashing into to head with in an edged hammerblow. The creature was not wounded by the attack; the exoskeleton did not crack or shatter. It simply dissappeared with into a puff of softening artificially red pixels in one blow, easily felled by such a high-level character. Wheeling as he had long ago learned to do in these simulators, swinging the sword back around with the momentum of his turn, Fayt ran onward to the next as it neared Sophia. She had backed away, and now finally roused herself to swing the wand at it nervously so that a bolt of fire swept out from the tip, but the spell was not aimed and only razed the ground. He struck that down as well, in the same easy single swing of the sword, before turning back to Sophia.

". . .Here." Setting his sword in the ground--in the clear artifice of the beginner's level both showed their framing clearly when they joined--Fayt took Sophia's wrist in his hand, moving behind her to steady her as he guided the wand towards the last beetle as it trundled steadily forward.. "You aim at it like this. And then it's easy. Okay?"

". . .Right." Nodding a little, she looked back over her shoulder to him, uncertain. ". . .You're. . .not going to get that one?"

"Nope." Squeezing her slightly where he held on, Fayt grinned. "You are."

"But! I. . ." Looking quickly from Fayt to the approaching monster, Sophia was torn once again. She was shaking, and the wand trembled in her hand so that if Fayt had not held it the object would have fallen. The beetle was close enough for Fayt to see the strange artificial green light of its wireframe reflected in the flat glossy eyes when Sophia slowly, carefully at last let herself relax into his guidance and held the wand out unsteadily. It glowed briefly, a flare of orange-red that swept from the grip of her fingers along the falsely metal shaft before coiling away in a bolt of rolling, chaotic flame and--

The world of Listia, the weight of armor, the heat of flame and feel of the rough ground beneath Fayt's feet vanished abruptly into the sea of dark indigo again as the floor suddenly trembled, heaving faintly. He braced his feet, jerking his head as if the source of the shaking would be found somewhere, plainly visible and labeled, in the bland dark room of the simulator. "What the. . .?"

In a blink of green light, the computer voice murmured an unthreatening warning to answer his undirected question. "Level two tremor detected. This system will be temporarily deactivated for your safety. Your data will not be saved. We apologize for any inconvenience. Please play again when the system returns online. Thank you."

That too was well within Fayt's realm of knowledge; what puzzled him was the tremor. A _tremor_? On _Hyda IV_? It was a stable world with no tectonic activity. The very concept of an earthquake should have been unheard of; a fantasy relegated to the realm of movies and roleplaying simulations. He opened his mouth to question the impossibility aloud but was cut off when it reasserted itself in the form of a series of violent and wrenching lurches. Fayt cried out as he lost his footing, grunted faintly as he fell hard on his rear to the pitching floor. Sophia shrieked, falling on top of him and clinging to his shirt with her face buried against her chest. She was looking to him for protection but suddenly, as the soft green light became red and the subtle but insistent burring of an emergency alarm began to play up, he remembered that he really was just a boy; wholly average, high C in his class who spent too much time on simulated games. The voice of the computer piped up again, no more urgent than before around a programmed warning. "This is an emergency alert. Hyda IV is currently under attack by unidentified spacecraft. All civilians should follow immediate evacuation instructions on the nearest console. I repeat: All civilians--"

Unidentified spacecraft. Under attack by unidentifed spacecraft. Fayt's mouth went slightly dry, and quite suddenly he did not feel that he could protect Sophia at all. He shifted, helping both her and himself to their feet. She continued to cling to him as he shook his head. "Com. . .Computer! What's going on?"

"Remote Station number seven, Hyda III, and Hyda IV are currently under attack by unidentified ships. Remote Station seven has scrambled its own ships to mount a counterattack. Statistical data indicates the armed staff of Remote Station seven to be insufficient, and therefore unable to provide evacuation assistance to Hyda IV. All civilians should follow immediate evacuation instructions--"

Aldian. It had to be an attack from the Aldian. What else made sense? Fayt's mind conjured up the image of the twisted wreckage he had seen in the earlier newsbrief; the oribital grave of Federation Station seventeen. He shook it aside hard, and quickly. Wouldn't they be able to tell, if the ships were Aldian? "What do you mean, _unidentified_?"

The computer was unfazed by his doubt. "Stand by for video display."

Much as the the brief instructions had materialzed on a sudden screen of aqua green or blue, so too did the image; crisp and clear and bright with the beautiful sun of Hyda IV beginning to drift towards a lazy and glorious sunset, the words 'live feed' in white capital letters across the upper corner. Through the thinness of the high atmosphere--here, yes, there were clouds though there had been none early in the day; lazy white wisps of cotton perhaps in preparation for tomorrow's squall--and splitting the white like breakers about its hull came a ship. Not the comfortingly tiered chromic contours of a Federation ship but rather something monolithically solid and overwhelming, great and glossily blood-colored against the sky; streamlined in a way that made Fayt think of a deep thing, a mythic whale or leviathan cresting the surface of a strange inverted sea. The light of the sun struck around it in a bold eclipse, a harsh lensing flare of light across the image and rendering the great battleship a foreign and harshly black sillouhete. Another flare speared across the image but this one was not natural--a brief lance of light from the sleekly hulking mass struck the tiny beachhead in the video, and its tiny buildings so white and clean and beautiful went up in tower of fire; an explosion rendered eerily silent by the soundless feed but whose reprecussions were felt even there in the simulation room as the ground trembled again.

The image froze on a frame of that cloud of smoke and flame, the computer voice continuing pleasantly onward as Fayt shook his head slowly, mouth working in quiet, horrified confusion. "As an emergency measure, all transporters have been directly linked the the Evacuation Terminal. Please commence evacuation by following the established route. I repeat: Please commence evacuation by--"

It was a faint tug at the front of his shirt, a trembling intake of breath which finally broke Fayt's disbelieving trance. He gasped for air he had not remembered to breathe, and put an arm around Sophia reflexively as she looked up at him again, away from the horror locked on the screen. "Fayt. . .I. . .I'm--"

Scared. He swallowed, trying to push down the lump in his throat, and gave her his best smile. It was tight on his face. "Don't worry Sophia. I'll stick with you." But against what? Who could be attacking them? He had _seen_ Aldian battleships, as surely as he had seen those of the Federation on so many news shorts and educational simulators, and that streamlined cruiser of the awful red sheen bore them no resemblance. He wondered who they were, wondered why the were, wondered what reason they could have for attacking a purely civilian planet in the secure center of Federation territory. He realized he had not seen his parents since that morning. That they were out there, on the beaches. And he wondered with a horrible feeling, strangely hot and not cold as he would have expected, if they were all right. ". . .Come on. Let's go."

There was a brief moment when he thought he would have to pick Sophia up and carry her; that she had retreated into a safe shell of shock from this, their first proximity to attack in what was considered one of the safest sectors in the galaxy, in this which was supposed to be a place of peace. But she released his shirt, taking his hand instead and nodding once, firmly. "Yeah."

The lounge had already emptied when the door of the simulation chamber opened to discharge them, and with only the dull repetition of a computer warning speaking over and over again into the resounding echoes of panic like ghosts somewhere in the halls outside it seemed more haunted than simply abandoned; the fountain a strange monument in a high-tech mausoleum. They did not know the evacuation route and did not bother stopping to check, on the flashing information terminal, but rather crossed the room quickly with hands still tightly joined to the exits. Sophia balked in the entryway, where vacationers could be seen running by in a flurry as unnervingly calm employees with mouths in nervous lines tried to organize them towards the transporters. Fayt stopped, looking back at her, and wondered if she had frozen up after all. ". . .Sophia. Come on."

". . .What about your mom and dad?" So they had occured to her as well. She shook her head, tugging back a bit. "I'm worried about them. Do you think they're okay? Shouldn't we look for them?"

Closing his eyes, taking a deep breath, Fayt considered that. He wanted to run off through the halls against the crowd and search them out. Rather childishly, he wanted them to be the voice of authority and make things right--a part of him genuinely believed that they could. But he shook his head, and pulled her forward. "I don't know where they are. Or if they're okay. But _we_ have to go or _we_ won't be safe. I'm worried about them too. . .but. . .right now we need to worry about ourselves."

She stared at him. "You're. . .I mean, I _know_ that. But--"

"Come _on!_" With a hard, solid tug he wrenched her forcefully into the press of the crowd, thick with smells of fear and sweat and sunoil. It dragged them along in a tide of humanity through the offwhite halls as the ground rumbled ominously beneath them again, harder and more violently than before; over the babble of the civilians which had already drowned out the computer voice Fayt could vaguely hear the roar of the explosions outside. They were getting closer. He held on tightly to Sophia's hand, palms slippery against each other, in fear of losing her.

They squeezed through the door of the transport room, which once might have taken them to the private beach or a sprawling shopping center or back to their bright comfortable room. Now people scrambled and crowded to be the first into the twin rows of single-passenger units. A short-haired Tetragene with her hotel hostess' skirt rumpled and hat askew, third eye wide and darting on her forehead, did her best to calm people in a voice raised to a shout by necessity. It was ragged at the edges. "Please, may I have your attention! Due to the state of emergency all transporters have been redirected to a send guests to a special floor, where a large transport unit waits to take you to the Emergency Shelter. After the arrival of all guests at the shelter has been confirmed the transport jammer located in the evacuation facility will be activated, but _no sooner_! There is enough time and space for everyone to reach the facility safely! Please, evacuate quickly but in an _orderly manner_!" The ground shook again, this time with the sound of the explosion a hungry roar so close the shatter of glass and shear of twisting metal was nearly audible. No one listened to the pleading hostess.

Fayt suddenly found himself, in the chaotic crowd, with the rounded bar-casing of a transport unit jammed into his gut. He gasped for air against it as he was pushed in, stars briefly bursting before his eyes, before the pressure was released. He grabbed hold of the metal curve to keep from being dragged away again and pulled Sophia forward. "Sophia! Go under the bar. Get in."

"But--"

"I'll come right after." He squeezed her hand slightly. "Promise. Just wait for me on the other side, okay?"

Her eyes were still wide, pupils dilated, breath coming shallow. For a moment she simply stared at him before jerked her head down once unsteadily in a hard nod, and ducked beneath the bar. She did not let go of his hand at first, beneath the thick metal. ". . .You'd better come _right after_."

He nodded, and pulled his hand away as she vanished into that whirl of brilliant white. The last shimmering particles cleared and he too ducked beneath, not fingering the touchpad this time but slamming his hand down upon it abruptly so that it shot a tingle of pain up his arm. The sensation became cold when the rising light fell down again and he found himself in the eerie silence of a large, flat transport unit; the walls of the room around it scrubbed metal and probably sealed against outside sound. Sophia stood on the lip of the unit, hovering at the downward step out of the way of the streaming clots, a dozen or half-dozen at a time, of other vacationers as they hurried from the room through the large hydraulic door. When it slid open the chaotic babble and surging, buzzing red light of the alarm rushed through from the evacuatuion hall. The change was disconcerting, and when Sophia ran to him and took his hand he nearly stumbled.

"_Fayt_!" She was pulling on him, and that may have been the only thing which kept him from falling against the loosely-spaced guard bars of the transport and out onto the cold floor below. He closed his eyes, took a long breath, shook his head. The muscles he had worked so hard earlier howled now for reprieve, and he was forced to ignore them.

". . .I told you I'd be right behind you. Come on. We're in the way." They stepped down from the platform, hanging close through the opened doors and out into the narrow metal corridor full of people running or staggering past. Fayt wondered how close the explosions had come by this time and shivered, pushing the thought away. It was something, he decided, that he would rather never know.

In the moving crowd something caught his eye; he jerked his head up abruptly, lifting one hand to wave. "Hey! _Hey_!"

Sophia looked up to him, brows furrowing, and then quickly around. "What--" And then she, of course, saw as well. She released his hand abruptly to run to them, just two more generic vacationers who had been swept from the beach in the shadow of the great red ship. Throwing her arms around the neck of the woman, her hands knocking away the straw sunhat as they tangled in short black hair and cheek pressing against the sun-browned olive skin with its fine lines of her late fourties drawn deep in worry, Sophia began to weep. "Uncle Robert! Aunt Ryoko! We. . .we didn't. . ."

"Oh, what a relief. I was so worried. So worried about you both." Ryoko embraced the girl, holding her close and stroking her hair softly; murmuring her motherly reassurances. She looked to her husband briefly, where the man stood with one hand on their son's shoulder.

Robert too wore a look of pure relief; his narrow and deeply-marked face blotchy with the red of sunburn and pallor of overexertion, glasses askew, slightly thinning brown hair dissarrayed. In other circumstances, standing there so solemnly in his unbuttoned print shirt and shorts about a small chest and the beginning of a stubborn middle-aged gut, one sandal missing, he would have looked comical. To Fayt, he seemed mercifully authorative despite it all, and he had to restrain himself from clinging to the man like a very small child. Instead he straightened.

". . .I'm glad we found we found you guys, dad. What's going on? Is it Aldian attacking?"

Tilting his head slightly, Robert glanced down to Ryoko and Sophia where they had at last released each other, the girl wiping the trails of tears from her face. He let his hand fall from Fayt's shoulder, lifting it instead to adjust his glasses so that they rest evenly across his nose again. "No, I don't think so. Rather, from the looks of their ships and weapons it's most likely. . ." He stopped, trailing off into an oddly abrupt, pensive silence as he looked there to the side, seeming less to regard the two women than he was studying some facet of the braced wall behind them.

Fayt shifted, slightly uneasy with that hesitation. After a moment, he tried to prompt the rest of the answer. His father did not leave things unsaid. His father did not hide things. And it was impossible that he simple _did not know_. Robert Leingod knew everything. "Most likely. . .what?"

". . .Never mind." He shook his head, and looked back to Fayt with a faint smile; wry and unassuming and only slightly helpless. It was a boyish and easily forgiven smile which Fayt had carried away in his own genetics. "We'd best just get out of here. There should be a few more partitions before the evacuation transport, so let's go."

"Dad--"

The hand lay upon his shoulder again, and squeezed once, faintly, as he turned Fayt towards the length of the hallway, where others were still fleeing. Robert inclined his head faintly towards Sophia and Ryoko, where the women walked with arms about each other. ". . .Later. Now we have to go."

Hesitating, Fayt nodded slowly after a moment. His father was right of course, and now was not the time. He followed along to the end of the hall, through another set of hydraulic doors with heavy airlock panels set in the side and green ready lights blinking quietly beneath the overwhelming red flash of alarm. Beyond it the running flow of people had slowed to a straggling line, cowed at last not by hotel staff but rather a collection of stern and uniformed young men, their hair cut short and hands gripped about the dark, long forms of phase rifles. The rigid lines of their bodies as they stood at attention, arms clearly muscled beneath the crisp bends of their sleeves, provided the hall with a sense of overwhelming order and control. The uncompromising professionalism with which they held their guns was comforting. The army of the Pangalactic Federation, despite the computer's denial, was indeed there to protect its people.

One soldier stood just inside the door, and nodded to the tight family group as they entered. "I'm sorry. You'll have to wait here."

Robert frowned slightly. "Is something wrong?"

"No sir. But there's a long line to use the transporter up ahead." He inclined his head towards the snake of humanity beneath the red light. "And the hall is full. So you'll have to wait your turn here."

"Oh, is that all." And then Robert was smiling and nodding again, so that the soldier--who, to his credit, seemed to be doing his damned level best not to crack a grin--simply had to return the expression. "We'll just wait then. We don't want to cause a--"

Behind them the moment shattered with a resounding explosion; close and hot and chasing down the tight halls. A few scraps of smoking metal debris skidded spinning by their feet. Someone screamed, androgynous as a computer in their fear. The soldier beside them unshouldered his rifle, waving them on as his uniformed fellows ran to take up places about the doorway as he was. "Get going! Keep moving forward, _now_!"

Another shout, anonymous; a curse and a question, a 'how did they come so far' into the howl of the alarm which seemed, suddenly, so much louder. Fayt felt his hand enveloped by his fathers, and he reached out to find Sophia's, blindly, with the other as they began trying to flee down the crowded hall. The ground was shaking again; the crossbraced supports of the hall groaning. Behind them the sound of phase blasts resounded, the sound of the airlock sliding slowly, agonizingly closed. Ahead of them the crowd was screaming. Behind them, the sound was suddenly echoed with a smell of seared flesh and the heavy thump of something large and fleshy striking the metal ground. It was repeated again. And again. Footsteps sharp and ringing as dropped metal in a rapid pulse across the floor.

Then, thick and slightly accented by his translator laboring to convert an unfamiliar language, came the sound of a voice cold and damp and somehow clutching which called to mind weeds in murky water. Deep, and unmodulated. Alien, in the worst of ways, for all that the words it spoke were bland and universal. They singled him out, pinned him down, made him shake and break out in a cold sweat even as he felt that strangely hot sense of fear rising up again, not cold as he would have thought. "There they are." A pause. The sound of another body striking the ground, the clatter of another fallen rifle drowned by sounds of fear and running. But he could still hear the clammy, inhuman voice clearly beneath the noise. Fayt felt his feet freeze to the ground, his hand jerked on violently. "Catch them."

He was shoved from behind--"What are you doing? _Run for it_!"--and in the next moment the man who had shoved him, another soldier it turned out, was fallen back half across Fayt's sandaled feet with his eyes wide and jaw agape, sifting smoke. His skin and uniform showed no signs of damage when Fayt looked down--only the eyes, shriveled and tiny in the sockets; only that horrible sweet stink of seared meat drifting from between his teeth. Fayt had never seen a body before. It moved his frozen muscles admirably.

He jerked back a step with a sound of horror and the acid taste of vomit building up in his throat. Swallowing both, he lurched forward again, over the corpse and _so careful _not to touch it only to have his flight blocked by the screaming, scrambling crowd. They could not pass through all together. Holding on tightly to each other's hands, they would never get through. Shaking, looking to his father for a solution, he saw only that both of his parents were staring thoughtfully down the hall to the source of the shouting, the thumping, the burned-body stench and sluggish voice like tolling fathoms. He watched his mother shake her head with pursed lips, and the expression struck him as odd--similar to the one she wore when an experiment provided particularly unusual but undesired results.

"Robert, it's--"

"I know." And his father only nodded, with that same slightly vexed expression. "I sort of expected it."

Looking between the two of them, who appeared ready at any minute to begin substituting chemical A or symbol C at a variable conjecture, Fayt shook his head. "Dad? Mom? What--"

He was pushed again. His father had let go of him, his mother had released Sophia, and now Robert pushed them forward into the seething chaos of the crowd. "Run, both of you!"

Wide-eyed, Sophia tried to pull away. Fayt closed his hand more tightly about hers, and held on. "Uncle Robert!"

"_Get out of here!" _

The fear or panic that had not been apparent in their strange, brief exchange was now beginning to show--a desperation in his eyes, a deep worry in the hoarse edge of his voice. Fayt braced his feet as well he could, refusing to be shoved away. He would not leave his parents, he would not leave them alone when they were afraid, the way they would not have left him. He could not turn himself in the press, but reached back. "Dad, come on! We can all--"

They were pulled away. Somewhere ahead whatever obstacle, whatever door or airlock had blocked the passage was cleared away, and the tide swept forward. Fighting it was useless; even as he struggled to turn and go back he could feel that it was useless. Behind his parents the sound of heavy footsteps snapped alive in that hard, sharp ring of metal. "_Dad! Mom!_"

Briefly, he caught a glimpse of his father raising his hands, cupping his hands around his mouth to shout above the myriad sounds. He did not carry well. "We'll be at the facility soon! Don't worry about us! I promise!" Another explosion rocked the corridor, a support beam giving way somewhere with the twisted unholy screal of rended metal. It was up ahead, from the sound of the screaming, but the crowd did not slow. The last words of his father behind him were a thin whisper drowning in the siren howl, and they must have been distorted--something strange about them. Something Fayt wanted to question. "You have to protect her, Fayt! No matter what else, _you have to protect her_!"

Then they were pulled around the corner, and he was gone.


	3. 02

**DISCLAIMER:** I, The Mad Poet, do not own any Star Ocean game, publication, or related character. I am a poor fan with too much time on my hands and no money, so don't sue me. This novelization is being written solely for my own sick, twisted amusement; and views expressed herein do not reflect those of the original creators. Do not expect a replica of the game—I am One Sick Puppy. By that token, the following fanfiction and all original concepts therein are my own; do not steal them because I will find out and beat you death with a crowbar. I know where you sleep.

Expect explicit violence, mature themes, politics, crude and/or ethnic jokes, lots of prejudice, more violence, mindgames, a reality check, and enough religious references to choke a Mormon choir.

Flames will be used to work on my tan.

Much credit, love, and general adoration to Lord Batpig/Batpig Sexgod, who has helped me with so much of this—from beta'ing my insufferable typos to putting up with that awful excuse for an SO game long enough to start this.

* * *

**02**

The support had, indeed, fallen ahead of them through the twisting chromic corridors. It lay crosswise over the tunnel, spitting sparks from severed wires and with the ragged end resting in a tangle of coils and jutting pipes, a smeared pool of liquid thick and dark in the pulse of red light. The babbling crowd milled about it, scrambled over it, squeezed beneath it; but gave no quarter and left no space. There were no Federation soldiers here to organize them. There were no Federation soldiers anywhere anymore, perhaps, except seeping smoke in the broken entry. Pushed from behind and pulled from the sides, battered in all four directions, there was little that Fayt could do but draw Sophia as near as possible, wrap her up in his arms and let them be dragged onward into the boil at the base of the broken brace. He shoved back with all the strength his legs could muster, seeking a single breathing pocket between crowd and wall. His back struck the metal, dragged along it, and there was none to be found. He found himself wishing that this would turn out to be a dream, or just another simulator game so particularly vivid--in a dream or a game or a movie or a story, he would have stumbled back into the alcove of an overlooked security door. The crowd would have been passable. The emergency would miraculously end as Federation forces pulled together to save the day. Deus ex machina would save them all.

If only it were a game. If only it were so simple. The idle wishes dipped and looped in a canted mantra through reasonable thought and drowned out plans to pass, to push through, to go over or under that dropped bar and get away down the tunnel to the last transport where they needed to be if they would ever get out of here. He closed his eyes and took a deep, long breath. Sophia squirmed faintly in his arms.

". . .Fayt, you're hurting me. . ."

He loosened his hold abruptly, and she gasped softly. "Sorry. You okay?"

"Yeah. You're stronger than you look, that's all." She went quiet for a moment, and he opened his eyes to look down at her when she turned in his arms. She did not want to watch the crowd--she must not have, because now she looked at the wall instead. ". . .We're just going to wait here until there's some room, right?"

"Right." He nodded, but in perfect honesty Fayt could not have told her he thought there would _be_ space. Not before those ringing steps and that cold muddy voice caught up with them. And then what would they be able to do? Against whatever weapon left no trace but seared the insides smoking, what would they be able to do? If only it had been a game he would have known what to do, but it was not and they had been forced so close to the beam that the jagged end of a broken pipe was digging viciously into his side, clouding his mind with a layer of sharp pain, small but insistent. He shifted his weight to the other side as well as he could to relieve the pressure. If it had been a game--

The thought was derailed as it crashed abruptly into another, setting off sparks and a smoke sign in his brain. He squeezed Sophia lightly. ". . .Hey. Sophia. I'm going to let go of you in a second, and when I do I want you to hold on to my shirt, and get behind me. Okay?"

She looked up at him, blinking a bit, and brows furrowed very faintly. "Uhm. . .sure. But why?"

"Just trust me." He removed his arms from around her completely and felt her grip instantly into the slightly loose fabric of his shirt, moving slowly around him, careful not to be pulled away. He turned, swinging out as much as he could from the wall to give her somewhere to go, and when he felt her squeeze into the space he had made, her heartbeat rapid against his spine, Fayt put his hands around the head of the pipe and began to pull. Twisting left and right, shaking and worrying the solid stretch of hollow metal, he grimaced faintly as it yowled in protest from its nest of shredded chrome but set his teeth and continued to pull. It gave way, but slowly and only a little at a time. He hoped he was strong enough, and the pipe was broken enough, for him to pull it completely free.

Sophia, silently watching from around the taut, straining lines of one arm, suddenly jerked her glance back down the long corridor. She tugged on the back of his shirt. ". . .Do you hear that? Fayt?"

He grunted faintly, not daring to relax his hold. His fingers were white at the knuckles. He could not hear anything over the noise of the crowd, their shouting and scrambling and murmuring and stomping. He could not hear anything over the squall and rattle of stubborn metal tightening its grip in the wreckage before him, and blood rushing in his ears as he strained to pull it loose. The crowd froze around them, briefly, and then with a lurch began to move again. Fayt was jarred by a sharp passing elbow and his hands slipped from the pipe, palm cutting on the jagged head. He cried out in surprise and sudden pain, clutching his hand and jerking his head up. The flow of people was quick, too quick. They were being mashed against the fallen support and the walls and each other. The movement did not come from the front--they were being pushed by those behind.

"Do you? What is it? It sounds like--"

"_Shhh._ Hold on." He tilted his head and listened, closing his eyes for a moment. There _was_ something there, a rapid and steady crack-click-snap crack-click-snap of ratcheting metal off solid wall or floor which was not the ringing footsteps but somehow instead made him think of the great horned beetles in the simulator with their gleaming wireframe skeletons. It grew steadily and insistently without pause, and with it the crushing pressure and panic all around seemed to grow as well. Except that it--the sound--was not really _growing_. It was herding them. It was _coming_.

And they would be pinned in the corner when it came if he did not _do something._

Fayt found that, with all other things considered, that was the last thing he wanted. When he watched from over the heads of the crowd a limp form of flesh and cloth fly several feet off the ground and slam into the high junctures of the wall bracings to fall brokenly back into the press, the choice to move on seemed even better. If only it were that easy. His hands wrapped around the pipe again, bleeding and slick. His arms ached and his palm throbbed and his head was screaming with a pounding methodical heat but it was not a game and it was not that easy, after all. There was sweat in his eyes and it felt like gritty liquid fire. He closed them again. "Come loose," he murmured pleadingly, "Just please come loose. I just need--"

Sophia screamed behind him, and yanked on his shirt. Pulled so hard the zipper bit back against his chest. "_Fayt!_"

The crowd was falling, panicking, parting. The insectile metal cracking was upon them, and it stank of ozone and that charred sweet flesh smell. But he could not open his eyes and see it. They refused, and his hands would not come off from the pipe, seemingly fused to the metal by some strange symbology of blood and sweat and maddening heat, his fingers locked. He could not let go. He let out a harsh, raw sob as he tried to wrench himself free, as the ratcheting sound now a horrible snapping and hissing raced towards them, as the bodies jostled and shoved and the fallen metal support screamed its rage as it was forced by the desperate mob to scratch slowly, slowly across the floor. _He could not let go._

Sophia was losing her grip on him. She was being pulled away. And screaming. He tried to turn to her and take hold, but he could not let go. He opened his mouth to scream, to cry out, but all that came out was a wheeze and all that came in was a breath of air to strike his lungs like a fistful of ice on that heat, strange heat, the burning sensation of panic. An inner mantra, in spiraling circles, saying not 'if this were a game' but 'god help me god help me'. Sophia's hand was pried from his shirt, and he lost contact.

_He had to protect her._

The scream came as he whipped about, determined to tear the flesh and fingers from his hands if he had to, but it would not come to that. The sound from his throat was matched by the inhuman screech of piping tearing free, and when the metal came loose in his hands the momentum struck out and up in a wide swinging arc--it struck the approaching thing, the dully metal semicircle of its unmarked head hanging from a bloated body of the same, and sent the half-sphere spinning off to smash against the wall in a nest of sparks and flickering light. He stared, dumbly and disbelieving, as the massive and spiderlike scratched-chrome body backed up on the spindly metal pistons of its legs, and with two from the set of many lifted the crumpled mess and set it back at the fore. It rotated lopsidedly before a flicker of yellowish light blinked to life on the featureless surface. And then it kept coming.

"Sophia!" Fayt turned and ran against the wall of the crowd with hands still locked rigidly about the metal. "_Sophia!" _He forced his fingers loose somehow and plunged one hand among the teeming bodies before quickly snatching it back. There was only the briefest moment of hesitation, the faintest cry of civil protest in his mind before he plunged in with hands firm about the pipe again to push and prod and, though he prayed it would not come to that, beat aside those who would not make space if need be. Because he had to protect her. The crowd was beginning to thin with screams of fear or pain as the faceless drone plowed through them, bodies falling stiffly to the ground or tossed aside to twitch with an unnatural rigidity against the metal walls. Some deep part of Fayt's mind registered this; some deep part of his mind heard the groans and stutters of chattering teeth in locked jaws. A part of him realized that they were being left _alive_, spared with brutal and purposeful efficiency, and in a way that was almost more chilling than the alternative. He thrust out blindly with the pipe again, felt it strike something soft which easily gave way, and grimaced as he barreled unheeding into the open space. The crowd closed again behind him. He could no longer hear the ratcheting gait of the machine above the screaming. He could no longer hear anything. He was shoved forward as someone fell heavily against his back, and his forehead struck the fallen brace blocking the tunnel as he stumbled. Stars burst in his vision, momentarily blinding him. He felt his legs buckle. He hit his knees.

Hands reached out suddenly and took hold of his arms from the front, pulling him forward. "Fayt!"

Sophia.

Fayt blinked rapidly, trying to focus his vision and clear the sweat from his eyes. He could see her in front of him, huddled beneath the slant of the fallen support and the wall—even though she had made it under, it had not been to a passable point and she was trapped on this side of the tunnel. The still forms of fallen people were all around them, either twitching with the incapacitation of the invaders' weapons or knocked aside and trampled by their fellow evacuees. People continued to jostle over and all around him. Sophia continued to pull desperately at his arms, trying to drag him to the relative safety she huddled in. It took him a moment before his head cleared enough to realize that he too would have to move if he wanted to survive, or protect her, at all. He lurched forward, scrambling over the floor to her side. It was growing slick beneath his sandals. He tried not to think about it.

"Sophia, are you okay?"

She didn't answer, but stared at him with wide eyes. "You. . .Fayt, you're bleeding."

"Don't worry." He loosened one hand from around the pipe, stiffly and with great effort, and used it to take hold of her hand again. "It's going to be okay."

"I'm scared."

"Don't be," he said, even though he could feel every chord and muscle of his body trembling violently, and she must have seen the fear and tiredness in him. He smiled. "We're going to be fine. Just trust me, okay?"

Sophia nodded slowly. "R. . .r-right."

And that was better, he thought, than the way she might have reacted to the things he didn't say; things about his concerns, or the fact that he could now hear it again, that terrible ratcheting sound. The fact that the weapon was beyond his power to destroy. The fact that he did not know what to do. He could feel the crowd thinning as people continued to fall, some scrambling through the space below the support and some being struck down even as they attempted to, so that their forms blocked the others from escape. "Just. . .stay here for a second, okay? Right here behind me."

"_Behind_ you?" She stared at him for a moment, not comprehending. It was only when he began to rise to his feet that Sophia reached out again. "Fayt!"

He rose, and turned to face the spiderlike machine with the pipe held out before him, held like so many simulated swords. He had to protect Sophia. And if he was not in fact the great swordsman Adonis Klein but only a frightened college student, if he did not in fact wield a great weapon but only a crudely broken length of pipe, then that would have to be enough. He would make it enough. Another of the thick metallic bodies clanked with bizarre speed into view, flickering in and out of his sight between the thinning crowd. The sound of its feet on the ground was muted every few steps as it came down into a shuddering body. Fayt thought it should have made him feel cold, but the only thing he felt was the pounding heat in the center of his skull. His vision was muzzy with the sweat in his eyes and still strung with vague white sparks from the blow to his head. And the terrible sound came closer: crack-click-snap, crack-click-thump.

The first of the machines, its head dented where he had struck it before, rushed towards him. He brought the pipe down as the distance closed. He saw a brief flare of light, something unknown; the machine's weapon system activating.

"_Fayt!_"

_Crunch._

Even as the pipe connected with the battered head again the body behind suddenly collapsed, caving down into itself in a rain of sparks and guttering smoke-flares. The jointed legs stiffened for a moment before buckling and collapsing under the broken weight, splaying out over the ground. It was not he who had done this to it: jutting from the once-uniform mass was not a small length of broken pipe but a massive stanchion twisted forcibly down from the wall. Fayt blinked at the two broken masses of metal, one crushing and impaling the other, not entirely comprehending what had happened. The stanchion did not look to have fallen on its own.

As this realization dawned his eyes moved up slowly, following the smoke and sparks. Through them loomed a massive form, towering over both Fayt and the wreckage. He jerked back at the indistinct sight of it, one side humping strangely upward over the rest. It moved forward, and he brought the pipe up again instinctively. "What the hell?!"

The huge form, whatever it was, continued to trundle ponderously forward through the smoke. The hump on its side shifted. "Hey Fayt, Sophia. You okay? You hurt?" Fayt started at the sound of the small voice, chirping but slightly strained, calling out for them. It was not a strange or alien voice. It was. . .

"P. . .Peppita?!"

As the giant moved forward out of the smoke completely Fayt saw that it was, and felt a rush of simultaneous relief and disbelief. The giant was the same bald man who had dimly but pleasantly smiled to him in the Rosetti's dressing room. . .when? It had not been long at all. It might have been as little as half an hour ago. The thought was chilling in a way that the day's more dire and immediate terrors had not touched on. The small girl sitting on the giant's shoulder, one of her larger ponytails now fallen loose and leaving hair to fan chaotically over her head and one side of her face, did not seem to have noticed any such terrors at all. She waved to them from her lofty perch and swung her legs as if she were on nothing more serious than a weekend jaunt; as if there were no screaming and no constant burring of alarms.

"Ya don't have to look so surprised!" Peppita slid forward in her seat, then jumped down to the floor. Detachedly, a part of Fayt's mind applauded her acrobatics for landing from so high without hurting her ankle or slipping on the slick paneling. She moved forward, gesturing with expansive drama to the chaos of fallen forms and crushed tunneling all around. "Me an' Ursus heard all this screaming and racket coming from over here and then we showed up and found you in trouble. . ."

Fayt continued to stare at her for a moment. It was not a moment he had to spare, but he found that he could not help it. The sheer normalcy of her dialogue in the situation was less laughable than jarring. It felt like something he might find in the opening of a not particularly clever or well-written game: _at the moment of highest possible tension, obligatory cute child subcharacter appears to save the day and offer smalltalk_. But, she said, he didn't have to be so surprised. He wondered again if she was entirely all right in the head.

When he finally managed to articulate something in his mind to say—just a simple 'thank you' for the helping hand—he found that he was not given the chance to offer it. The previously silent giant spoke at last, slow and uneasy. "Lil' lady?"

There was an edge of urgency to his voice, but it seemed lost on Peppita—she rounded on him impatiently, putting her hands on her hips. "Whaddaya want, Urs—Whoa!"The man cut her indignation off into a startled yelp as he abruptly scooped her up again with one hand, tucking her tiny frame under his arm. Fayt also found himself pushed aside as the big man moved forward, but he saw, briefly, what the giant Ursus had seen.

The second machine was coming closer.

"Oh man, this is _not _what we need right now!" Peppita announced from beneath Ursus' arm, needlessly. She flailed, wriggling in his grasp. "Ursus, can you take care of that one? I'll help, lemme--"Fayt reached out to grab hold of the writhing child, and Ursus released her easily to him. She looked up to Fayt expectantly once her feet were on the ground again. "C'mon, you two, we've got numbers on our side!"

The noise multiplied suddenly, and Fayt took a moment to lean around the big man before answering. Two more of the strange machines had skidded around a corner into the hallway. They did not clank methodically along like their predecessors but instead lurched forward in a horrible charge, trampling mindlessly and inexorably forward towards them and the fallen support barricading the tunnel. Strange light flickered and flared in their single eyes. The weapons systems, he was sure of it. He leaned back again, looking to the young girl again. She must have seen something terrible in his face, because she quieted. ". . .No, I really don't think we do."

"Lil' lady," Ursus rumbled again, "you go."

"But Ursus--!"

As quietly as the noise of the hall permitted, from the ground behind them all, Sophia spoke up. "Peppita, thank you for your help. But we have to meet someone at the evacuation facility. Isn't your family waiting for you there, too?" The girl froze for a moment, staring down as Sophia held out a hand—not just an offering of companionship, Fayt thought, but an unspoken need to be helped along herself. "We can go together."

Peppita continued to stare for a moment, then shook her head hard; so hard the rattling of her beaded hair was made audible. "Well. . .but this way is blocked, and it's already a complete disaster back that way! Sure we gotta get out of here, but we don't have any place to _go_!"

And then, suddenly, there it was—the cold feeling Fayt had been expecting all along. It seized him suddenly, digging firmly into his gut and spreading out to take hold of his spine and limbs, somehow without ever relieving the feverish heat. His mouth felt terrible and dry, and he realized for the first time that along with stale fear and his own sweat he could taste the sharpness of blood. _Back that way_, she had said, but she had come from the same direction they had. The same direction in which they had left his parents. "W. . .what do you mean, a disaster?"

He did not entirely realize he had turned back to the hall until he felt something scrabble by his legs, and Sophia suddenly stood in front of him with arms spread wide, as if Ursus himself were not enough of a wall to dissuade him. "What are you doing, Fayt?!" Her eyes were too large in the flickering red alarm lights; her hands damp and dirty and dark where their palms were turned towards him. "Didn't you hear her? It's too dangerous back there!"

"But--"

Even as Fayt protested Ursus let out a roar of effort as the machines closed the final gap and he reached his great hands outward for weapons in the form of the groaning and buckling wall supports, their timing almost seeming to spite him in its support of Sophia's argument. "Forget it!" She shouted at him over the rising noise. Metal crunched. There was a sudden wave of heat and the air crackled menacingly with ozone.

"Go!" Ursus shouted to them. He reached back with one arm, pushing Sophia roughly and suddenly out of the way as he fell back against the fallen column. Fayt caught a brief glimpse of a strange burn on his face, seeming to bubble up from beneath the skin. He remembered for an instant the guard lying dead in the doorway with sunken eyes and smoke seeping from his mouth.

Instead of moving back with the girls, Fayt bolted forward. He had partially released the pipe in his hands before; now he gripped it two-handed, treating it once again as a weapon. It felt grafted into his hands again; the metal still hot between his suddenly icy palms. "Mom and dad are back there! I'm not leaving them!"

"Fayt! Someone stop him--"

Something caught the back of his shirt, dragging him back and slowing him down. For one blind moment, and for just that one moment—this must, he thought, be what was called the Heat Of The Moment—Fayt almost lashed back at it with the pipe to knock it loose. Almost. He began to round on it only to hear Peppita's grunt of effort as she attempted to pull him back. "Didn't you hear me?! There are all kinds of explosions and stuff—it's an inferno back there!" He realized what he had almost done, but somehow felt nothing but a massive wave of fear and frustration.

"Let go of me!"

A second pressure joined, and he felt his sandaled feet beginning to slip back on the floor. Sophia had also taken hold. "It's too dangerous, Fayt!"

"_Both of you," _his throat was hoarse around the words and he realized that he too was screaming. Everyone in the hall was screaming. Distantly he heard the sound coming again, coming in a massive wave, _crack-click-snap, crack-click-thump_, and he realized that there were more coming, an endless sea of cyclopean metal spiders ratcheting through the shuddering forms on the floor. "_Both of you let me go!"_

Suddenly, the floor swept out from beneath him. The world spun and tilted crazily, wild with red light and noise all blurring together. A massive pressure wrapped around him; beneath his back, the world was rigid. Above his head, far above, the pipes and wires spat wildly in their shattered nests. He heard a wild, raging howl and could not manage to be horrified when he realized that it was himself. His limbs kicked and thrashed uselessly at the air, the pipe falling from his fingers at last as he scrambled for a handhold, something, anything solid to orient himself and take control again.

The tangle above him was the ceiling; the iron band around his body and the hard ridge driving into his spine were the circus strongman. Ursus had lifted him, one-armed, and now held him thrown over one shoulder like a sack. The position quickly drove the air from his lungs and left him gasping for breath, unable to protest.

Footsteps clattered on the ground around him; the ceiling spun over his head as Ursus turned. He turned his head to look away, and found himself looking down at a grossly canted angle at Peppita. Even in such a dire situation, the grim expression seemed foreign on her small face--or, perhaps that was only the angle and flashing red lights. "Listen to me," she said. "We''ll all die if we don't get out of here right now." She stared at him, small fists clenched, as if willing him to understand.

"Let me go," he gasped again. He could not understand. He _would _not understand; she was the one who refused to understand. "_Let me go! _My parents--"

Peppita's jaw set. "Come on, Ursus." The little girl turned away from him, and with her bangles clattering darted out of his line of sight. Fayt felt the giant holding him tense and shift, his stance bracing and the angle of his shoulders sliding as he lowered the one not occupied by Fayt's struggling form towards the blockage in the hall. Amid the screaming and the roar of the alarm and the deafening rattle of the approaching machines--so close now he swore he could hear the individual legs rotating in their settings--he did not realize what the man was about to do until he felt the air rush by his face and felt the shock of impact slam through the contact of their bodies.

Ursus drove himself into the fallen support again, and again. It howled against the wall, and finally gave way. Those evacuees who still could rushed around them. Upside-down, Fayt could see the machines--a wall of them rushing forward, almost close enough to touch. The red of their eyes (weapons) flaring in a wave of light, brighter even than the flashing of the alarms. He opened his mouth and only a breathless wheeze came out. The massive form beneath him continued to drive forward, a seemingly unstoppable force. It was not fast enough. Nothing could have been fast enough--

The hall was swallowed in a wave of heat in the same instant that a core of ice seemed to explode in the deeps of his skull. The light became white even as everything around them seemed to burst at once into flames.

And then, silence.

As if none of the horrific minutes before had ever passed, they stood once again on the plane of a large, flat transport unit surrounded by its soundproof scrubbed metal walls. Except for the ragged heaving of their breaths and the soft hum of the equipment it was deafeningly silent, and the soft, steady pale light burned in Fayt's eyes after such a seeming eternity in a world of flashing red. He did not struggle as Ursus gently and carefully set him back on the ground. There was no reason and, in truth, he did not think he had a struggle in him anymore. When his feet touched the floor, he felt his knees go weak and his legs tremble. He had never done anything in his life, he thought, and would never do anything again, as difficult as standing tall in that mundane moment.

"Welcome to Iruba Shelter number five," he heard, and when he slowly lifted his head--so heavy it could not have been _his _head, surely--he saw a Federation soldier standing at the transport controls. He seemed so calm, Fayt thought, that he must have had no idea of what was really going on. "This is an evacuation shelter located underneath Hyda IV. You will be given room assignments, and though you are allowed to move freely about the facility to locate family if necessary we ask that you wait in your assigned rooms until the rescue ship arrives. If you have any further questions, please refer to the consoles or ask the nearest official for detailed instructions."

Still feeling numb--his head full of cold and the rest of his body rubbery with heat--Fayt nodded slightly. He felt people shifting around him on the platform and realized that they were not alone. Slowly, people shuffled off from the platform and out the hydraulic doors into the tense murmur of the evacuation shelter beyond. Fayt watched them go, and became aware that he was wiping his raw, sweating hands against his sides only when Sophia gently reached out and took his wrists to stop him.

Beside him, he heard a small, but deep breath move in and then shakily out. "All right then." Peppita's bells did not jingle so much as rattle discordantly as she moved forward a few steps, pausing on the edge of the platform. "Well...we're going now." But she did not. She stood, and Fayt saw her turn her head to peer over her shoulder in a manner which she probably thought was stealthy but was, in fact, painfully obvious. He didn't want to look at her, though. He didn't want her to look at him with those great green eyes. Not until he could sort out this hot and this cold; whether he was grateful to her and Ursus for saving him or hated them both for their intrusion.

He looked away and closed his eyes, clenching his fists. Feeling the way they had been torn, the way the sweat burned like fire in the gashes. He could feel his teeth grit together in his setting jaw until he thought they must all shatter. The silence seemed to go on forever as he stood there, burning from the jaw down, wanting...not to hurt _her_, not really, she was just a kid trying to do what was right, but wanting so badly to lash out at something that he almost felt like someone else entirely, like there was nothing else he _could_ do; as if he existed only to lash out.

"Hey..." Finally, she spoke again, small and tentative. There was another pause, but this one was brief--suddenly, in another loud clatter, he heard her bound away from the platform. "Cheer up, okay!" A great mass which could only be Ursus moved forward as well, pausing briefly and then following after. Fayt opened his eyes only at their retreating backs, watching the two performers step through the hydraulic doors and vanish. He and Sophia were alone in the room, except for the Federation soldier at the controls. He closed his eyes again and let his head fall.

Briefly, Sophia released his wrist, but only to touch his hand again. "Fayt..."

She wanted to talk. He could tell by the sound of her voice, the trembling of her hand on his. She was afraid, and he understood that completely because he was afraid too. Except that wasn't right. Slowly, the heat was unwinding and leaving him with that weak, empty feeling he had experienced when his feet first touched the ground again. It had all happened so fast, and now... He didn't want to talk. He didn't know what he would say. He thought he might possibly start to cry if he tried.

He swallowed that feeling, hard and quickly, and when he opened his eyes and looked back to her he hoped to God that it was more controlled than he felt. "...Shall we go?" Certainly, to his own ears at least, he sounded maddeningly calm. The words didn't even seem real, or like the kind of thing a real person would say in such a situation. But they were the words that he said, and he could see in her paled face that his calm did something for her, at least. There was a smudge of blood on her cheek, beside her mouth, and he looked away again. "There's nothing left to do here anyway. We should..."

He didn't know, but he saw her nod out of the corner of his eye anyway. "Yeah."

Silence. They were probably keeping the Federation soldier from his post. Certainly there would be no more people coming through; the transporter had obviously been shut down. They had been the last ones through.

Sophia's hand suddenly moved again, resting on his arm. "I'm sure your parents are okay."

And he wanted to tell her so badly that this was not a movie, it was not a game, that this was the real world and things did not always work that way. If it were, and if it did, he would have been the hero he always played as. He would have been able to do something, anything, in the hall back there. He would have been able to fight off the machines or go back and bring his parents through safely. He would not be stuck with this terrible, empty feeling that drained his strength.

But there were other routes in the evacuation center, that lead to other transporters, and sometimes the real world did work out that way. So he didn't tell her that it was not a movie or a game, and instead he nodded, and smiled. "...Yeah, I know." It was hard to do, but he was glad he had. The words took a weight off of his shoulders and made it truly possible. Saying it somehow made it real. When he went to step forward, he found his legs were not as weak as they had felt, and he could move after all. "Let's go."

He did not wait for her, not wanting to give himself a chance to go weak in the knees again, and instead moved forward trusting that she would follow. He heard her doing so behind him, the sound of her sandals uneven on the floor where one of the straps had broken and left the insole flopping against her foot. All reassurances aside, she probably didn't want to be alone. He didn't blame her. He wanted to keep her close, too.

As he reached for the door, Fayt heard the soldier clear his throat behind them, and paused. He turned only when the young man addressed him. "You'll both be assigned to room five-oh-six. There should be first aid kits there, but we also have an infirmary set up, if you'd like to have your injuries looked at. The rescue transports should have more advanced medical facilities if you would rather wait."

For a moment, Fayt wondered how bad they must really look. If there was something he was not quite absorbing in his shock. He found himself almost asking, but instead Sophia smiled, and thanked the soldier, and that was the end of it--he turned away from them to absorb himself in the transporter control's screens and readouts. Sophia took his hand again, and they emerged into the hall outside.

In truth, it was not much different than the hallways they had only just escaped from. The walls were the same bland metal, girded with the same supports. Many of the same people, people Fayt had only minutes ago shoved aside with his broken pipe, loitered in them. A small child bounced excitedly on his feet and brightly chattered about the incident like some sort of adventure, calling it 'just like a movie' while another Federation soldier attempted to comfort and console the child's mother.

"Yes, ma'am, of course we're safe as long as we stay here. No matter what kind of scanners they have, locating this facility is for all intents and purposes completely impossible."

The woman shook her head in a frantic sort of daze, clutching the soldier's uniform sleeve. Her arm and shoulder were heavily bandaged. There was blood on her clothing. Fayt did not know much about first aid, but he thought that she probably should not have been on her feet. "My husband, what about...I-I have to get in contact with him. We have to get back to him, he'll be so worried--"

"I'm sorry, ma'am, but we can't allow any use of transportation or communication devices at this time."

"But I--"

"I understand how you feel, but transmissions at this time would put our secrecy at risk. I can't allow you, or anyone, to jeopardize the lives of the people in this facility." The soldier paused, gently detaching the woman's hands from his arms. "Now...if you'll come with me, ma'am, you and your son can get some rest until the transport arrives. You'll certainly find your husband there."

It was all very comforting to know, in a way, but as Fayt watched the woman allow herself to be led away with a bracing arm about her back he also found it incredibly frustrating when what he wanted more than anything was to make contact with his own family. To assure himself that they had in fact made it through all right, and that the idea was more than just some wishful fantasy.

Sophia squeezed his hand, quietly, and they moved forward again. The walls passed by them in a monotonous curtain of flat blacks and greys, broken only intermittently on one side by stairwells leading up or down guarded by more Federation soldiers, or the muted green glow of environmental status screens. Fayt did not so much as glance at them, knowing that he would not understand them and also that if the environmental controls were to fail, everyone would know. He continued to walk them along the halls of the shelter, undirected except for the fact that there was only one open path to take, a single concise square around the core of rooms. He turned his eyes inward, watching them pass by. Here, the walls were broken by the pale indentations of hydraulic doors, each identical except for the small numbers stamped onto their faces. Probably, he thought, they should find the infirmary, but the soldier had not told him in which room it had been set up. A pair of men who would have looked more at home in starched suits than their rumpled vacation wear pretended not to be frightened by telling each other it had been a mistake, complaining about the inconvenience and politics of it all. When the piping of the shelter settled, though, or the nearby doors hissed open, both of them still jumped and jerked their heads about like everyone else.

The hallways, in the end, were far too much like those they had escaped, and Fayt did not want to stay in them any longer. Giving Sophia's hand a slight squeeze in warning, he ducked into one of the nearby rooms without bothering to check the number stamped onto it.

"--just glad that everyone is okay," an old man was saying, his voice scratchy and slightly halting. The room was as sterile as a hospital or barracks, with six rigid beds arranged on its plain metal floors against the plain metal walls, and the motley assemblage within looked out of place in their bright colors, their gaudy costumes and makeup. It took Fayt a moment to realize that they were, for the most part, at least recently and passingly familiar to him. In that time, the old man--so small and wrinkled he resembled nothing so much as a humanoid walnut in a top hat and flaming red dress coat, his hair a pale and wispy halo about the back of his head--had already noticed him, and turned his small, bright eyes upward. "...Well. We were going to move on to business, but who are you?"

Immediately, Fayt took a step back towards the door. "Er...Sorry. We were just--"

"What?!" The sudden yip came from a similarly small figure in front of the walnut-man, but she did not have to turn around for Fayt to know who it was. Peppita's great green eyes turned up to him anyway as the child swung around to face him and Sophia, her mouth a small 'o' of surprise. "Fayt! You..."

"We're looking for someone," Sophia cut in. She held his hand tightly, tugging him back to her side. The circus troupe blinked at the two of them almost collectively, seeming to gauge them. "We were separated in the evacuation, and..."

The small man clambered up onto one of the beds, sitting beside a taller, younger woman in a ruffly red dress. His feet did not even pass the bottom of the bed, swinging like a small child's. In other circumstances, their comedy of contrasts might have actually been funny. "Well, who are--" He stopped as the woman leaned down and spoke quietly in his ear. Fayt thought he heard his name mentioned, and Peppita's, before the man looked back at him with a nod. His eyes were soft with understanding. "Ahhhh...your parents..."

Peppita must have told them what had happened, then, but before Fayt could say anything another of the troupe spoke up. "Well, what can you do, hey?" The man's eye seemed lodged shut in a perpetual wink, but despite the disfigurement his loudly green-and-yellow clothing and the swathes of red and white makeup on his face suggested a clown. He waved a hand dismissively, brushing the entire thing off. "Hey, at least you're still alive, eh?"

"Gonnella!" Peppita took a swipe at him, striking the billowing fabric of his pants ineffectually. "You should watch your tongue you big--!"

"It's okay."

There was a brief pause, during which Fayt realized that the one who had spoken was himself. He sounded small and tired. It was fitting, but not how he wanted to sound. "It's...like he said. Even if I'd gone back to help them, I wouldn't have been able to do anything." He lowered his head, closing his eyes again. The heat pounding in the center of his skull was still there, he realized. When he closed his eyes, his fists clenched in frustration, he could almost see it. He heard Sophia say his name, felt her touch his arm, but nothing could make it go away. "If only I was a little stronger..."

"Strength, 's not enough." The sage words were a bit slurred, but Fayt recognized the dim and ponderous voice of Ursus. Looking up again, he realized at last that the strongman's face was badly burned. Medical gauze had been clumsily and hastily affixed to cover what must have been the worst of it. He looked slightly drugged. His arms were laced with clumsily tended bruises and lacerations. "You can't beat them."

"He's right." The woman in the red dress leaned forward emphatically. She sounded surprisingly motherly. "I bet they were professional soldiers--there's nothing we can do about people like that. There's no reason to blame yourself."

"And you know, just because they didn't make it to this evacuation facility doesn't mean your parents are dead, or even injured." The small old man seemed to consider his own suggestion for a moment and then, finding it to his liking, nodded. "You know, they might be hiding out somewhere. Don't give up so soon."

The troupe immediately jumped on this possibility--or rather, jumped to expand it. The clown seemed particularly eager. "Or hey! They might have been captured or something!"

"_Gonnella!_"

"'S all right." Ursus nodded slowly. "If they been captured, y'can go rescue them."

Fayt was a bit taken aback. Captured? They might have been... He remembered, suddenly, coming to the realization in the back of his mind that the people in the halls had not been killed by the spiderlike monstrosities but incapacitated, left alive for some unknown purpose. He remembered that deep, cold voice uttering the order 'catch them'. It had never instructed them to kill. That capture had not even occurred to him in the face of those facts seemed almost absurd. Of course. Of course they had only been captured if they had not escaped altogether. Of course they were alive. That there was no _reason _for his parents to have been captured was completely secondary. It was not that there was no reason, only that he had not thought of or realized it yet.

But...

"But...still, if they were captured, what can I do? I--"

"Defeating the evil ones and saving those who are captured--there are the prerogatives of the hero!" Fayt jumped suddenly, and felt Sophia do so as well at the sudden outburst. Among the members of the troupe, Fayt was startled to see another familiar face--that of the Alphalian from the hallway of the Grantier. His patrician features were all but lighted in rapture beneath a thin coat of soot. "If you are truly a hero, then victory will fall into your hands of its own accord! On the other hand, if you are not, then that is proof that your parents have not been captured at all, because where would be the dramatic import of _that_?" He blinked a bit, seeming to ground himself again at a faint cough from the old man. Looking around, the man shrugged expansively. "...What? Either way he has nothing to worry about."

"...Anyway, you'll just have to wait a little longer. The better question after all is what could anyone possibly do right now, isn't it?" The old man nodded again, agreeing with himself before anyone else had the chance. "No one even knows what's going on yet. Just keep your chin up."

Fayt nodded again--slowly at first, then a sudden jerk. "Yeah. Yeah, you're right."

"You should go to your room and get some rest," the surprisingly motherly woman in red suggested. "You look tired. Certainly too tired to do anything right now."

"Or ya could stay here with us!" Peppita all but leapt forward, hands clasped behind her back and wide eyes turned up to him. She had looked at him much the same not so very long ago in the entertainment room. Then, he had realized that she was endearing, and now he realized that he was not angry at her at all. "W...wouldn't you feel safer here, with everyone?"

As he had before, Fayt reached out to put a hand on her head--but, remembering the cuts on his palms, he stopped and drew it back again. "...Thank you, but I'm fine. I want some time alone to think things over anyway."

"Oh...okay." There was a brief, awkward moment of quiet in which Peppita wilted. When no one else spoke up, Fayt squeezed Sophia's hand lightly. This time, when he made to leave she allowed him, and followed.

For a moment, Fayt did not go any further than the far side of the door, simply standing in the hallway. It had emptied even more during the minutes they had spent in the company of Peppita's family--the Rossetti's, he found he remembered--and now the evacuation center was almost ghostly in its quiet. The remaining sounds of footsteps on the metal floor all seemed to come from some interminable distance despite the small size of the facility. Maybe it was simply that the woman in red was right. He was tired. He was tired and his head hurt and his hands hurt and his legs felt ready to give out at any time, and all he really wanted was to have his parents there to tell him everything was all right, but in lieu of that he thought that maybe he might be able to settle, just for a while, for a little sleep. He hadn't thought it was possible until the suggestion had been put forward to him, and now he realized that he wanted it, needed it, more than anything. He could feel Sophia leaning heavily on his shoulder and knew that she must have felt the same.

"Hey," he said quietly, looking down to her and releasing her hand. He did so only to put a supporting arm around her. "Sophia, are you okay? We can find the infirmary if you want."

She shook her head, pressing it against his shoulder. "Nn. I'm fine."

"You're exhausted," he corrected her. "The guy said...room five-oh-six, right? We'll go there. You should rest."

She didn't argue again, simply nodding against him. He used the arm he had put around her to gently guide her off of the wall and lead her down the hallway and around the corner. Watching the numbers on the door, it only took Fayt a brief amount of time to find the room in question, but he was still all but carrying Sophia when he opened the door.

"Sorry," she murmured. "I guess it's just all catching up with me..."

"It's okay." He squeezed her, briefly, in what he hoped was a reassuring hug. She was probably in shock, both of them were, but he did not say that. Instead, he helped her into the first empty bed in the room--identical to the one they had only just exited except for the people inside--and gently drew the single blanket up over her. "Don't worry about it. Just rest."

For a moment she said nothing, gingerly fingering the edge of the blanket. "...Uhm...Hey, Fayt?"

He wished she would just take his advice and rest. The sight of an empty bed, one set aside for him to use, had made his entire body's protests seem all the louder and more insistent. Every fiber of his being ached and he just wanted to lie down. He did not say that. He smiled a little instead. "What is it?"

She opened her mouth again and then, much to Fayt's surprise and confusion, suddenly gripped the edge of the sheet and lifted, yanking it up all but over her head. Fayt blinked, stepping forward a little. "Sophia?"

She turned her eyes--almost all that was still visible over the blanket pulled up over her face--downward, not looking at him. "Will you...will you stay here by me until I fall asleep? I don't want to be alone."

Fayt stepped back again. Actually that was not quite right--his legs quivered, and it was all he could do not to _fall _back away from her. He managed to keep himself steady long enough to sit on the edge of the bed closest to her, mercifully unoccupied. "...Sure." He hoped it sounded steady. Steadier than he felt, at least. "I'll stay up and be right here, watching over you. You just relax and get some sleep."

"Thanks..."

He smiled a little, nodding to her as she released her hold on the blanket and closed her eyes. She looked so young and helpless just lying there, the lump her body made in the bed so tiny and seemingly insignificant, that for a moment it was hard to remember that they were adults, or nearly adults, at all. He certainly did not feel like one just then, and the idea that they were still so young she needed someone standing guard for her to go to sleep was more reasonable in light of it. They were children, just small children, and all of this was some kind of dream. Obviously he'd spent too much time in the simulators, the way his imagination was starting to run away with him. He swore to himself that he would cut back--no, quit. He would quit. If he dedicated more time to his basketball and his studies and less to fantasy games that sent him spinning off into wild nightmare realms, maybe he would manage to be something other than average in one of them.

His eyelids were drooping; his head descending towards his chest. He jerked himself upright when he realized it only to see that Sophia was already asleep. Had he dozed off, or was she so exhausted that she had fallen asleep as soon as she closed her eyes?

It didn't really matter, he decided. Groaning slightly as the shift of positions strained his abused muscles, Fayt lay back on his own bed. He did not bother with the sheets. He was too tired, it would have involved too much movement. He lay his head on the pillow and promised himself that when he awoke, he would see to his hands. Except that was silly, wasn't it? His hands were fine. This was all a bad dream. He closed his eyes.

The world went black.


	4. 03

**DISCLAIMER:** I, The Mad Poet, do not own any Star Ocean game, publication, or related character. I am a poor fan with too much time on my hands with no money, so don't sue me. This novelization is being written solely for my own sick, twisted amusement; and views expressed herein do not reflect those of the original creators. Do not expect a replica of the game—I am One Sick Puppy. By that token, the following fanfiction and all original concepts therein are my own; do not steal them because I will find out and beat you death with a crowbar. I know where you sleep.  
Expect explicit violence, mature themes, politics, crude and/or ethnic jokes, lots of prejudice, more violence, mindgames, a reality check, and enough religious references to choke a Mormon choir.  
Flames will be used to work on my tan.  
Much credit, love, and general adoration to Batpig Sexgod, who has helped me with so much of this—including putting up with that awful excuse for an SO game long enough to start this.

* * *

**03**

_The world went white._

_The light in his eyes was so bright he could see nothing else. He did not know where he was or if he was alone. There were small sounds all around but they were not human sounds. He was contained, but he did not know where or by what. It was small. He was small._

_His head hurt. His eyes were full of light and his head was full of fire._

_"Resign thyself," a voice said, booming and massive, greater than the world._

_The world was full of light and he was full of fire._

_"Resign thyself."_

_He was full of light and the world was full of fire._

_"RESIGN THYSELF."_

_He was the light. He was the fire._

_There was no world._

Fayt's eyes opened into darkness.

For a moment he lay shuddering on top of his blanket, feeling dirty, clammy with sweat. Afraid. He heard a foreign sound-not a human sound, a small mechanical click-and jerked upright suddenly. He gasped, and the air tasted cold and artificial. His mind scrambled, trying to discern where he was. He could see little, but in a muted green glow from the wall behind him he could see that he was not in his room, either at home or in the hotel.

The hotel.

It all came back suddenly-the day in the simulators, the walk with Sophia, the attack on Hyda and the nightmare run to the evacuation center. He looked down at his hands and was not as surprised as he had hoped to convince himself to be when they were not a child's hands, but his own, and badly torn. When he looked to Sophia, she was still asleep and there was still blood smeared near her mouth, now dry. When he looked to the wall behind him, the soft green glow proved to be from a clock set in the wall. _772.12, _it read, _3:52. _It was still so early, and he was still so tired, but he found that he could not even consider returning to sleep. His head hurt too much. He closed his eyes and pressed the balls of his hand to his temples, trying to still the deep, constant throb.

The sudden, equally pulsing buzz of an alert played over the facility speakers made him jump and cringe simultaneously. He groaned slightly. "What now...?"

On the other bed, Sophia first stirred, then haltingly rose up on her elbow, rubbing her eyes tiredly. "Fayt?" Her voice was muzzy and slurred. "What's that sound?"

He stood, and moved beside her. Where before his muscles had screamed in protest, now they were stiff and ached sullenly. "It sounds like they're going to make an announcement-"

As if in agreement with his guess, the buzzing was replaced by a brief, pleasant climbing chime. When the sound of a woman's voice followed it over the speakers to announce an update for all refugees, it all but mocked the situation with its grating cheer.

"I repeat," the voice of the speakers said brightly, "this is an official announcement for all refugees. We now know that the recent raid on the resort planet Hyda was a surprise attack by Vendeen. Remote Station Seven mounted an attempt to defend Hyda IV, but it was thwarted by a tactical Vendeeni strike."

Fayt tilted his head up, brows furrowing slightly. The announcement, he thought, didn't make any sense. The attack had been by the Vendeen? At first the name was unfamiliar, but then he remembered-the Vendeen, like the Federation, were currently at war with Aldian. So why would they have attacked here, a Federation planet far away from the front lines? It was true that they had turned down the Federation's offers for aid on several occasions, if the news was to believed, but as far as he had heard there had never been any kind of hostilities between the two powers.

Beside him, Sophia's hand shifted, seeking his own. He took it and gave it a faint squeeze as the voice over the speakers chirped onward.

"Currently, the Pangalactic Administration is scrambling ships from surrounding regions, but Vendeeni forces still have control of this sector. We request that all civilians begin boarding rescue shuttles for immediate evacuation to Remote Station Six. Please do not panic. Refer to the nearest console or attendant for further instructions."

_Have a nice day, _Fayt almost expected her to add, but she did not; the rising chime repeated, and with it the announcement began to play over again. He turned to face Sophia. "Come on, we've got to go-" He paused, looking her over again. "...You okay?"

"Yeah." She paused, then nodded once, more firm and sure than the word had been. "Yeah, I'm fine. A little sleep really helped calm me down."

"Okay. Hold on just a little longer. We'll be safe once we reach Remote Station Six."

"Okay." She nodded again. She believed him completely; he hoped it was true. Of course it was true. How could they not be safe there?

He shook his head and turned away, giving Sophia's hand one more light squeeze before releasing it. Stepping over to one of the consoles against the wall, he touched a hand to the screen to activate it. "Computer-" he paused. He had meant to ask for further instructions, as per the announcement, but the request stuck in his throat. "...Tell me the present location of Robert and Ryoko Leingod," he told it instead.

The computer answered immediately. "The present location of the specified individuals is unknown."

He felt his insides lurch, the cold feeling gripping him again. He reached forward and brought a hand down hard alongside the console, raising his voice without meaning to. "What do you mean, 'unknown'?"

"Fayt-"

He waved a hand to hush Sophia as the computer responded again, blandly, unmoved by his outburst. "Both Robert Leingod and Ryoko Leingod's positions were lost on Galactic Year 772-12141923."

"_Lost?_ How could- Well what then?"

This time, the computer paused. Its answer, however, did not change. "The information system is currently experiencing technical difficulties. Confirmation is not possible at present."

"What?" He brought his hand down on the metal again, hard, but it only made his hand hurt.

"The information system is currently experiencing technical difficulties. Confirmation is not possible at present."

"No-!"

"The information system is currently experiencing technical-"

"Stop!" He slammed his hand down again, harder, and then again. He leaned his weight forward onto it, his head coming down until it pressed against the cool metal wall above the console. He closed his eyes. _Lost. _What did that mean, 'lost'? Were they dead? Were they only missing? Had they be captured after all? 'Lost'. It could have meant anything, and for once-for the first time in his life-the computers could tell him nothing. He was alone, and in the dark, and there were no lights to guide him out of it. He would have to search blindly with his hands, but he did not know how, or where to begin.

Sophia touched his back lightly. "Fayt...come on. We should go."

"Yeah," he said quietly. He squeezed his eyes shut a little more tightly, lifting his hands up and pressing the balls of them to his temples for a moment. The deep, slow throbbing in his head would simply not go away. "Yeah, I know."

"Are...are _you _okay, Fayt?"

"Yeah." He let his hands fall from his face and straightened up again, turning to Sophia and giving her a small smile. "I guess I'm just a little tired. I'll be fine once we're on the station and can get some real rest."

She looked him over slowly, then reached out and took his hand again. This time, it was Sophia who offered the small, comforting squeeze. "You do look pretty worn out. Let's hurry. The sooner we go the sooner we can rest, right?"

He blinked at her once, slowly, then smiled again. It came a little easier this time, and he reached out to brush at the tiny streak of blood by her mouth. It flaked away easily under his fingers and the skin was unbroken beneath it. He found that more reassuring than he knew how to express. "...Yeah. Come on, let's go."

Together, they re-emerged into the metal hallways. They were not alone there, as other evacuees were also weaving tiredly out of their rooms after being awakened by the grating voice of the official announcement. Many of them held on to each other, much as Fayt and Sophia did, some even leaning heavily against each other's shoulders. Here and there, a child was carried still sleeping in a parent's arms. That, too, was a reassuring sight. Maybe, Fayt thought, everything would be all right again after all. As long as parents still had the time to walk carefully and quietly so they would not awaken their children, things could not possibly be as bad as they seemed. There was a war going on, after all. Sometimes, bad things happened-but in the end, hadn't his life and those of every other civilian always just gone on the same? It was only this frightening, maybe, because he had never experienced it for himself before. For some people, for the soldiers now quietly and unhurriedly ushering the evacuees into the transport rooms and calmly reassuring them that there was plenty of room for everyone and not to worry, things like this were their daily work. If anything were really and truly wrong, they would not be so calm about it. It was all so reasonable now that he thought about it. And, of course the computer system could not find his parents right now. Hadn't he heard before that all scans and communications would be restricted? As soon as this was over, he would be able to find his parents. Everything would be okay.

Together with a large group, he and Sophia stepped up onto the transport pad. The light swirled around them and the cold nestled deep in his skull, also throbbing slightly in the gash across his palms. As the light dimmed, leaving them in a larger, brighter transport room than before, he decided that he would get them looked at on the ship.

"Welcome to the Federation transport ship GFSS one-two-three-seven-two Helre," a sharp young soldier was saying from the front of the room, near the transport door. He looked over the crowd of them sympathetically even as he gestured them to hurry off of the transport pad and make way for the next group. "You must have been through a lot. We will soon be departing for Remote Station Six. The observation bay is located directly through the corridor outside of this room, and we ask that you please proceed there and wait until we reach our destination. Our gravitic warp is fully operational, so you shouldn't have long to wait."

All around there were nods and murmurs of understanding, and together, almost moving as one, the weary crowd continued forward out of the room. Behind them, Fayt could hear the transporter activating again to receive more evacuees, but the sound was quickly cut off as the door to the transport room closed behind them.

The hall was not like the ones they had left behind in the evacuation center. Where they had been harsh and claustrophobic, the Helre's hall was wide and curving, both in its arc around the body of the ship and in its shape with a high, slightly rounded ceiling. The finish of the walls gave what would have been stark light a faintly glowing quality where it shone down from two tracks embedded in the ceiling between supporting arcs, and the outside wall was left open to the vast darkness of space beyond by a series of window panels. A solitary female soldier stood in position against the inner wall, and she nodded to the clump of people as they began to break up into smaller groups again, wandering down the hall as they had been instructed. Their footsteps seemed faintly muffled on the hard floors here as they had not been in the evacuation center.

Fayt did not immediately move forward, looking slowly around and taking it all in. He had never seen a Federation transport ship. It seemed surprisingly mundane.

"Please continue straight through to the observation deck, sir," the female soldier said at length. He blinked at her as well, then nodded and continued forward.

_She's pretty_, he found himself thinking as he passed her, even though it was really not the time or place for it. But her hair was short and wavy and she looked like a girl he shared a morning course with back at college, and it might have seemed even stranger, maybe, not to think about things like that at all. Further along the hall a woman was tugging at her son's arm as he plastered himself to one of the windows. She was telling him to stop that and come along while he was gushing about being on a Federation ship, a _real live Federation ship_, and all of it was so quiet and so normal, almost like something he could have seen on a street at home except for the vast black view beyond the window. Everything was going to be okay.

Some of the doors in the corridor seemed to be locked, with small ID panels beside them sporting small, bright red lights. It made sense that some of the areas would be restricted; the Helre, he reminded himself, was a military vessel after all. He and Sophia passed the doors with the red access lights, instead continuing to the end of the curving hallway. The access light on the large door there was green, and it opened readily when they approached it.

Even before completely entering, it was easy to see that most of the evacuees in the observation bay were not using the flightport-style row seats that were featured in much of the large room, but were instead gathered together near the interior wall. Some were staring fixedly at it, and some were looking pointedly away from something there-probably some kind of monitor array or display screen, if the consoles jutting from the wall below it were any indication at all. Tugging on his hand, Sophia commented on it. "Fayt, what's that? They're all watching something."

"Uh..." As they continued into the observation bay and the doors slid closed behind them, Fayt released Sophia's hand and took a few steps forward ahead of her. He tilted his head, squinting slightly to see the wall. He could not, only discerning shifts in its color or light as they reflected off the faces of the closest viewers. "Something on the monitor? I don't know-what _is_ that?" Given their day so far, he doubted it was an in-flight movie.

Coming up behind him, Sophia pushed slightly against his back, urging him forward. "Well let's take a look and find out."

"Okay, okay." He shuffled forward, stepping up just enough that Sophia wouldn't have to push him any more-maybe as much because she shouldn't have to as because he didn't want to be pushed. But as they came up on the edges of the murmuring crowd, he stopped abruptly again. The changing light flashed over his face like those of the others as he turned his widening eyes up to it, unable to pull them away.

_Everything is going to be okay._

The monitor displayed a view of space as well, with the vast curve of Hyda IV glowing green and blue between the white strips of clouds in its atmosphere. There, he could even see the great swirling funnel of the tropical storm that had been forecast for the next day making its way inexorably for the mainland. He had promised to take Sophia shopping when it struck, he remembered. Something that they could do together out of the wind and rain. It seemed like so long ago. Above the planet itself, closer and brighter than the distant stars, small sudden flashes popped here and there, the source of the erratic light flickers on the faces of the evacuee viewers. They looked completely innocuous-flashbulbs bursting in the darkness of space-but Fayt knew perfectly well what they were, like everyone else watching. Sophia moved up beside him. He put a hand on her arm, but she had already seen. He felt her arm move up, maybe putting her hands over her mouth as she uttered a slightly muffled gasp. "Oh...oh, this is horrible-!"

The display screen was showing them the fight taking place for control of the Hyda system. The flashes were the individual ships in combat exploding.

They were everywhere.

The uneasy shuffle of the crowd watching the silent deathscape outside was broken in a startled jump as the speakers in the observation bay came to life with a dull chime. "We are about to enter gravitic warp to escape the battle zone," a man's voice told them in clipped tones. " I repeat: we are about to enter gravitic warp to escape the battle zone. All evacuees prepare for warp turbulence." And that was all. The 'click' of the speaker system turning off again was nearly audible in the uneasy silence that followed it. For a moment, no one moved.

The image on the display screen shifted, a cloudy haze obscuring the battle almost in tandem with the the first lurching of the ship, and suddenly the crowd came to life again. Fayt took hold of Sophia's elbow; her hands were still pressed over her mouth. "...Come on. Let's go sit down. We'll fall if we're still standing when we go into gravitic warp." She did not speak, but silently nodded and Fayt guided her gently to an open pair of seats while some still remained. She leaned against him, and he put an arm around her to hold her tightly as the ship lurched again, jerking the passengers-first small twitches, and then a great lunge. There were no restraints on the seat, and it was all that he could do to make sure she was safe. The observation bay had not been meant for occupation during warp flight. There were a few startled cries around the room as people were jarred from the seats and thrown to the floor.

Fayt closed his eyes as the room was flooded through the vast observatory windows with the flashing, shifting colored glow of warp space, but he could still see the light flicker through his eyelids. The feeling of the seat's vibrations beneath him translated even through the cushioning and could not tell if Sophia was shaking against him because of the rattling motion of the ship or something else entirely.

"Everything is going to be okay," he said softly, or thought he said. He wasn't really sure; he hoped that if he had spoken aloud that Sophia had heard him. The light flashing red strobes through his eyelids was strangely lulling and distracting, almost mesmerizing, like the flickering of a world full of fire.

When he opened his eyes again he realized that the quality of the light had changed from the bright, stringent flashes of an initial gravitic leap to the soft rhythmic pulsing of the deep warp path. His body still felt stiff and sore, but it was suddenly no longer rattled by the movements of the ship; it took him a moment, blinking unsteadily into the shifting brightness, to realize that he must have dozed off in his seat. He had no idea how long he had been asleep, but it was a more than reasonable assumption.

He shifted, rolling his shoulder in an attempt to work at least some of the stiffness out of it, and felt a weight begin to slide off of it as he did so. He turned his head to see Sophia lifting her head from where it had rest against him, also blinking the sleep from her eyes as she reached up to rub her face. The seam of his shirt had left a fine red line pressed into her cheek, and a few strands of light brown hair had stuck to the corner of her mouth. "Fayt...?"

"Sorry," he apologized, and meant it. She looked as if she needed the rest. "I didn't mean to wake you up."

"No, it's all right." She ran her hands over her face again, then gave him the brightest and most chipper smile she could probably muster under the circumstances-and, to her credit, it was a lot more than he had expected of her. Looking at Sophia, he could almost imagine nothing was wrong at all. She bumped her arm against his slightly. "See?"

"Yeah." He smiled back, and for a moment they just sat like that with the soft pulses of the light from outside the observation bay's windows washing over them. Eventually their gazes drifted outside the bay window instead.

"So...Where do you think we are now?" she asked at last.

Fayt, though, could only shake his head and look around. "I wonder? There haven't been any announcements yet." Or at least, so he assumed. For some reason he didn't want to admit that he had also fallen asleep. It did seem as if an announcement would have awakened one or both of them though.

Another long silence stretched between them as Sophia looked around, rocking slightly back and forth on her seat. Fayt realized that she must have been restless, probably nervous. Just as he was about to suggest they get up and walk around though, she beat him to it with an even better idea. "We should go ask one of the crew." She smiled at him hopefully, or maybe expectantly, and for a moment he could just blink at her. In the middle of everything, wrapped up in trying to protect her, Fayt had almost forgotten that Sophia was the brilliant one, the one with initiative and drive when it came to reality instead of games. Now that things had settled down to the mundane every day mechanics of relocation instead of fighting for escape in the packed halls of the evacuation system, it made sense that she would be the one to take charge once more.

"...Fayt?"

"Huh? Oh..." He blinked, and shook his head. He must have been staring at her. Putting his hands on his knees, he quickly pushed himself up to his feet. "Yeah...good idea."

She stood up beside him and put her hand on his arm, just for a moment. She didn't say anything, but he knew what the action meant: 'everything will be okay'. He smiled back at her, and together they walked up the steps from the smaller viewing wing in which they had found their pair of empty seats and back up into the main body of the observation bay. By now, the crowd had long since dispersed, and the wall monitor displayed nothing but a holding screen with the ship's name and designation beneath the Federation insignia. Only a single Tetragene man remained near the monitors, pacing back and forth along their length muttering passionately to himself as he went. The small translator Fayt wore picked the words up and fed them back in Terran at a slight delay-words about vengeance, punishment, reparations for the death of innocence that made his hands twitch and left a faint disconcerting warmth behind his eyes. Though some of the other evacuees milled about the room, some solitary and some huddled and murmuring amongst friends in speculation of how long this would last, most seemed to be doing the same thing that Fayt and Sophia had done and slept as well as they could in the stiff-backed chairs. Everyone looked tired and worn.

There did not, however, appear to be any members of the Helre's crew in the observation bay with them. Fayt frowned slightly. They had been told to wait in the observation bay...but at the same time, he didn't see any harm in going out just to ask. Sophia took the decision out of his hands by pulling him along towards the door, and then through it back into the soft glow of the hallway.

As it turned out, he should not have worried.

"Fayt! Sophia!"

It was Peppita, who bounced and jangled up to the two of them, rocking to a stop on her toes. She was not alone in the halls, and both the wrinkled old man and the woman in the red dress stood nearby. Neither of them were smiling, instead looking out the clear outer walls to the subtly colored pulses of light beyond. Even Peppita's face looked drawn. Of the rest of the circus troupe there was no sign.

"Hey...where is everyone?" Fayt asked, only to have Sophia follow immediately on its heels:

"And are you all right?"

The little girl blinked up at the two of them for a moment, then smiled. Someone had taken the time to put her hair back up again. "Oh gosh, you don't have to worry about me. Everyone else is sleeping, or in the medical room. And Gonella's right down the hall. It was just pretty scary, you know?"

Fayt nodded a bit, as did Sophia beside him. They did know. They most certainly did. "Well, we're glad you're okay." He hoped that she had not seen the space battle on the view screens, though. That, he thought, might have been a little much for a child. He shook his head to clear it of the thought and looked out the windows again. "...It's beautiful out there, isn't it. Were you watching the warp stream?"

Instead of immediately answering, Peppita went quiet. Fayt looked away from the window back to her, and saw that she had turned her eyes towards the ground. After a moment, she took a step back towards the old man and young woman she had left behind.

"...Peppita?"

"I saw Hyda just before the ship entered gravitic warp," she said with uncharacteristic quiet. "It was...all covered in red. And for a second I actually thought it was really pretty, but then I... I realized it-"

"Oh, Peppita-" Sophia reached out to her, but the little girl just shook her head. When she looked back up at them, her eyes were dry but afraid.

"It's like my mama said. It wasn't a dream or anything-it was all real. How many people... how many dreams died in those flickering lights?"

Sophia said nothing. Fayt had no answer either. Peppita reached up and took the hand Sophia had offered to her, holding it tightly for just one moment as her smile came back to life on her face. "I'm really glad I saw you guys again. It makes me happy."

And then she was gone again. She slipped loose and jangled and clattered away down the hall, leaving them behind. Neither of them said anything but Fayt felt Sophia squeeze his hand a bit and squeezed back in return. They began to walk down the hall again a little more slowly than before. When they rounded the subtle bend of the hallway Gonella, the clown, came into view just as Peppita had said he would. He was entertaining a small child by loudly describing and acting out the many silly measures he would take in interrogating the Vendeen and making them all apologize, every one, for three days and three nights straight. The child's mother stood nearby with a tight smile on her face. For a moment, Fayt was happy to just stand there and watch them. Sophia did not tug him along, so he thought she must have been too.

Across the hall, on the side that led into the deeper parts of the ship, the security light beside one door blinked from red to green before sliding open. Noise spilled out into the hall as it did so.

"Hey-_hey!_ Get your hands off of me!" Fayt looked on in surprise as a heavyset man in a green shirt and vacation shorts, less one sandal, was gently but firmly pushed back out into the hall by a young officer of the Helre's crew. The officer was tall and skinny, with glasses. He looked like the kind of man who would have been blown over by a stiff breeze, but he seemed to be removing the offending civilian easily, with only one hand on the man's chest pushing him back. "What are you trying to pull? First you let the Vendeeni get away with this while you're _napping_ on the job and now you manhandle me? Do you have any idea who I am?"

"I'm sorry, sir." The officer sounded calm and tired. "But this incident is currently under investigation. We have no further comments at this time-"

"-You're trying to silence the public! I'll-"

"-and you are attempting to access a restricted area-"

"-Don't you play games with me!" The man's voice rose higher, shouting now to drown out the softer voice of the young officer. He reached up and shoved back, taking a step away and out into the hall, then pointed accusingly at the young man. "Don't you play games with me, and don't you waste my time! Get me the captain, damnit! I want to talk to the captain!"

The officer seemed unfazed. "I'm afraid I can't do that. As long as the captain is the commanding officer on this ship, his orders are absolute. My current orders from the captain are not to let any civilian enter any area outside of the lounge, medical facilities, and viewing bay for any reason. This is to prevent complications and interference with the ship's normal functions, and our ability to bring you all to safety." He nodded once, curtly. "As a military ship we may be lacking in the amenities you are used to, but with your cooperation this trip can still go smoothly and quickly for all involved. Good day, sir."

"What-hey!" The officer had closed the door behind him, and the security light went red as he did so. The man in green pounded on the closed hydraulic doors. "You...you blithering idiot!" he howled. "I'll remember you! I'll use my influence to get you canned the second we get to Remote Station Six! You'll regret this!"

The man quieted after a moment, breathing heavily. When he turned to face the hallway, his lined face was blotchy with red and the thinning hair combed over his fading hairline was stuck to his scalp in dark strings by sweat. He glowered around, and Fayt realized without surprise that they were all staring at him and his outburst-him, Sophia, the woman, the clown, and the child. The man also seemed to realize this, and his lips pulled off his teeth for a moment. "What are you all looking at? Get out of my sight!" He turned without waiting for a response, if indeed there were to be one, and stalked away on his own.

It was only a few moments before the silence broke again. The little boy reached out to tug on Gonella's puffy green pant leg asking "And then what would you do?", and that was that. There might have been an odd tension in the air, but it broke with that. The clown resumed his posturing, the mother wore her tense smile of relief again, and life went on. It was strange but also wonderful, and it reminded Fayt that it would be the same with all of this. Life would go on. He and Sophia glanced at each other.

"...Maybe we should just go back to the observation deck and wait after all," he suggested. She sighed a little and glanced off to one side, looking out the windows. She did not have to say that she did not _want _to simply sit around and wait, he could tell. Part of it was that he knew her-this was Sophia, the one who always wanted to know and understand. Now that she had rested and safety on their arrival at the Federation Station was a foregone conclusion, now that there was no longer any danger, the inquisitive scholar in her had awakened from its vacation-induced slumber and was hungry for answers. He nudged her arm slightly with his. "Hey, Sophia."

"Yeah," she agreed a bit halfheartedly. When he nudged her again though she turned a faint smile on him, and nodded. "...Yeah, you're right. Wherever we are now, we must be close anyway. We'll probably be there already by the time we find someone to ask."

He smiled back at her. "Probably."

As the door to the lounge opened, the ship lurched slightly, making them stumble against each other-except that it wasn't really a lurch so much as an odd, floating stutter. The sensation was almost one of being in an elevator, and Fayt almost laughed at the idea of so archaic a device being associated to the great ship. He helped Sophia stand straight again and thought no more of it. "Come on, let's sit down."

"Good idea. If a little turbulence like that..." She trailed off, then stopped completely as they stepped into the room. She looked around, blinking slightly, and her brow slowly furrowed. "...Fayt?"

"Yeah?" He looked down to her in concern, wondering for a moment if she might not still need some rest. Or what if she actually had hurt herself earlier? "What's wrong? Are you okay?"

She shook her head slightly and lifted a hand, pointing past him. "Fayt, look. The light-"

He turned his head to follow the line of her finger, looking down to the wide open viewing platforms and the space beyond, but could not tell what had troubled her. There was nothing wrong. The black expanse of space was clear, the stars glittered in the distance. Closer but still far away, a bright blue planet and its small, ruddy moon glowed softly against the darkness. It could not have looked more serene if someone had engineered it to do so.

It took him a moment to realize that this was exactly the problem. The light-the soft pulsing sheet of colored light that had enveloped the ship as it moved through gravitic warp-was gone. The ship had returned to normal space. He frowned slightly. "Maybe we're there?"

"I don't see it," she said. He felt her shake her head, and then she let go of him, moving forward and hurrying down the steps with her broken sandal flapping against her foot. Somehow, they had forgotten to fix it like somehow he had forgotten to have his hands seen to. He didn't know why they occurred to him now; her sandal simply reminded him. He watched her for a moment as she put her hands on the guard rail and leaned forward towards the clear wall. It looked like there was nothing there at all and she was simply leaning out into space with her head framed by the brilliant blue planet beyond like an off-center halo. He joined her a little more slowly than she had hustled down the steps, as others around them also began to notice the fall from warp space. "I don't see any sign of a Federation Station. I think we're in the middle of _nowhere_."

"That doesn't make any sense. Why would we leave warp?" Still, when he stood beside her and looked outside, he had to agree. There was no sign of anything except the blue planet.

"Wait," someone else said, and a hand stretched out to point into the darkness. "I see something, there!"

Everyone looked, of course. "...Is that a ship?" Someone ventured hopefully. "Maybe there was trouble with the creation engine and they're here to pick us up."

Fayt shook his head even as it was suggested. There were two of them-the oncoming ships-and these were not the sleek, tiered ships of the Federation. They were great and solid and dull, deep red. His first thought was that he had seen them before, on the computer's live feed. His second, more chilling, was that these must be what Vendeeni warships looked like. Could the Helre's shields hold up if they opened fire? His mind scrambled, trying to find a reassurance. Supposedly, or so he thought he remembered hearing, Vendeeni technology was based on spacetime manipulation. Yes, he was sure Sophia had said something about it. It wasn't his field and he hadn't really paid much attention.

Not very reassuring. Not very reassuring at all.

Sophia let go of the rail and moved closer beside him. She must have recognized them from the video feed as well. "Fayt-"

She was cut off by the sound of the intercom coming alive with a grim voice. They turned towards it, looking upward instinctively. "This is the captain speaking." Fayt found himself dully unsurprised as the already worn refugees began to buzz and fuss. Soon, he knew, a new panic would begin. "We are currently under attack by a number of Vendeeni battleships. Our gravitic warp engine has already been disabled, which means that escape is not an option. All power has been diverted to our shields to buy us some time, but I wanted you all to know: our chances are slim." There was a murmur. Someone let out a low, eerie moan. Fayt put an arm around Sophia and watched as the evacuees began first to shift, and then to roil uneasily as the captain's voice went on. "I had hoped to transport you all the way to Remote Station Six, but it seems that is now beyond my power. All evacuees are requested to proceed to the ship's escape pods."

The ship lurched suddenly with a massive rumble. People cried out, stumbling against seats or walls or each other. The captain's voice continued on even above the noise. "Please remain calm and follow the instructions of the attendant nearest you as you board your pod." For a moment he was silent, and then, "...Good luck to you all."

Fayt glanced down at Sophia. She opened her mouth to say something, but then the ship lurched again and a bright flash of light burst behind them. Sophia was jarred from the loose drape of his arm and stumbled forward with a faint cry, but did not quite fall. They both turned to the window, knowing what had happened. "A direct hit," Fayt found himself gasping. Even now, more lances of glaring reddish energy were hammering the ship, leaving lightbursts and the hex-matrix of the shields briefly visible wherever they struck. The observation bay was in an uproar as some ran to seek the pods and others simply ran, like a small dolphin-faced humanoid still clad in a torn wetsuit, in panicked circles. Someone moaned that they were doomed.

It was into this scene that a member of the crew entered the viewing bay, careful as he ran in not to crash into any of those fleeing out of it. Over the chaos, Fayt thought he heard the man say that the hangar bay—and in it, the escape pods—were located a level up. He also heard him say not to panic, but it was too late for that, and Fayt had already seen such warnings go to waste today. Yesterday? It seemed so long and had happened so fast. He grabbed Sophia's hand again. One of their palms was sweating; he could feel it burning in his cuts. "We gotta go." He heard her gasp an affirmative. One of them pulled the other forward, but whether he was leading her or the other way around was no longer clear. Once they reached the crowd pushing to get through the narrow observation bay door, they were carried along regardless.

After today, Fayt vowed, he would never use another automated walkway again.

In the hall people scattered again, fleeing the congestion in the doorway. Federation soldiers stood along the walls, ushering them along, urging them to stay calm, promising that there were enough escape pods for everyone. The ship's lurching became almost rhythmic under the Vendeeni bombardment. It jerked and shuddered like a thing alive, knocking its passengers about in its throes. They bounced off of the walls and each other wildly.

Out of the corner of his eye Fayt saw a flash of pink by the long windows, stationary and glaring against the red flashes of Vendeeni fire and the black of space beyond. Without thinking about it he stopped, digging his heels in against the hard floor as best he could when someone slammed into his back in their hurry. Sophia continued forward for a moment only to be pulled up short by their joined hands. He felt her turn at the other end of his arm, looking back at him and probably wondering why he had stopped, but he did not see it because he was not looking at her. He backed up, pulling her along with him and pushing against the flow of people.

"Peppita, what are you doing?" He had been right—it was her. The little girl, as well as the rest of the circus troupe, were tucked into the alcove provided by two supporting arcs, quietly watching the rest of the evacuees hurry past to the escape pods. They rocked slightly with the heaving of the embattled ship as if used to the rigors of the war zone. When Fayt and Sophia emerged near them, she simply blinked up at him. Her mild expression was somehow frustrating. "Come on, why aren't you headed for the escape pods?"

"Oh," she said, simply, as if it were the silliest question he could have asked. "We're getting on last."

Sophia squeezed his hand a little. She pulled slightly as well, maybe to remind him that they too should be running, but it was only a very little pull. "Peppita, it doesn't matter who goes first or last. There are enough for everyone-"

Beside Peppita, the small and wrinkled old man Fayt recognized from the shelter put an arm around the small girl's shoulder. When he spoke he did so quietly but firmly, but his voice still carried easily enough that Fayt did not have to strain himself to hear it over the rumbling and shouting. "Please don't think we're being careless or leisurely, but panicking is no better." He blinked up at the two of them. "I've simply decided that we will go last."

"And I've decided to stay with my family. I don't want to be separated from them no matter what." Peppita nodded once, firmly, then suddenly froze. Her tiny hands came up and clapped over her mouth. "Oh, I-I'm so-"

Fayt shook his head quickly. "I understand. Be careful."

"Silly." She lowered her hands slowly, revealing a sheepish smile. "We're the Rossettis. We'll be fine. You guys get out of here!" As if to emphasize her words the ship gave enough sudden, shuddering heave. The floor seemed to jump beneath their feet. The people in the hall around them screamed and cried out. Peppita let go of the old man beside her and ran forward, putting one hand on Fayt's stomach and one on Sophia's beside him, and pushed. "Go on! We'll see each other again, okay?"

Fayt hesitated. Sophia squeezed his hand again, then let go of him and knelt down to give Peppita a brief, tight hug. "Of course we will. We still have to see your big debut!" Peppita said nothing, only made a small sound and hugged her back. "All of you, take care of each other."

Fayt stood back, feeling slightly awkward as the two girls released each other. Peppita moved back to the old man's side, and Sophia took his hand again. He found that he could do little more than nod to the circus troop, who smiled and waved to the passing evacuees as if to reassure them that everything would be okay. There was something almost funerary in the quiet of their cheer and he thought, suddenly, that they might not see them again at all. But all he could really do was nod. "...Be careful."

They stepped back, and were pulled into the hall again. Somewhere the stream of people turned, bouncing and bashing off of the walls with the ship's steadily more violent shaking, and moved onto a stairwell. It was open in the center and people were forced to grip the smooth rails fanatically or be pitched over the edges to fall into the deeps of the ship. Another soldier pressed against one corner firmly directed them upwards:

"Once on the upper deck, turn right and proceed all the way to the back! I repeat—on the upper deck, turn right..."

They fumbled past. A child was crying. When they stumbled out onto it at last after what felt like an eternity on the narrow stairwell, the upper deck hallway was identical to the one that they had left behind, and outside the long windows Fayt could see the shield flickering more and more weakly under the rain of fire. From somewhere deep in the ship, a crackling, grinding noise began to stir. It vibrated beneath their feet against the steady hammering from outside, only adding to the cacophony of motion. Federation soldiers to either side ushered them down the hall, urging them to form an orderly line. It formed up quickly but just as quickly dissolved into a roiling mob when it butted against the doors of the hangar bay.

They were closed. Three Federation Soldiers also stood in front of them, the man in the center with his arms outspread in a further, final bar. Sophia slowed down, but Fayt turned his shoulder towards the door, lowering it slightly as he pushed his way through the milling, frightened people. It seemed strange, but though he might have felt rude doing the same thing only days before he almost did not even think about it after the initial evacuation. After beating people aside with a broken pipe, he supposed, a little shouldering aside was positively refined. Thinking about it that way gave him a chill.

"Please, no no no, please just let me out," someone pleaded. "I don't even need a pod. Just let me out and I'll go for a swim, really..."

The dolphin-faced humanoid. It must have been. Beside him the Tetragene man who had earlier hissed and muttered of vengeance raised his hands and shoved one of the young soldiers. The man looked strong, but they did not so much as budge under the pressure. "I thought we were being saved, and now this?"

The child kept on crying. Fayt could understand why people were lashing out or becoming hysterical—not just the fear, but tiredness, a tiredness that could not be solved by sleeping in the shelter cots or on the hard seats of the observation bay; a tiredness of running and uncertainty and tight claustrophobic halls that stank of fear and roared or rumbled all around. He reached forward between two people and tried to press through, looking imploringly to one of the soldiers standing guard. "Hey—hey. What's going on?"

None of them looked at him. The one on the right—another pretty girl; why did it seem like only pretty girls joined the Federation military, as if the games and movies had finally gotten something right about the way the world worked—simply continued to gently but firmly press back those who tried to push through to the doors before their turn. "Please do not panic, and return to your place in the line. There are more than enough escape pods for everyone-"

"I heard this ship was over occupancy because of the rescue operation!" Someone shouted. Fayt turned, looking for them. He was startled to see the balding man from before; the one who had demanded to speak to the captain. "_I heard you don't actually have enough at all!_"

The crowd groaned and lurched forward as one, so that the three soldiers were forced to take a step back closer to the doors. Still, they did not let fear or uncertainty break their stern expressions. The female soldier continued unfazed. "Priority will be given to the elderly, women and children, but I _repeat_, there are more than enough escape pods for everyone."

"Everyone will have a turn." The soldier in the center picked up where his compatriot had left off. "We are currently waiting for the previous group to finish departure so we may load the next set of pods. It will only be a little longer."

The doors behind them opened even as the grinding sound below rose to a chattering roar—he heard the heavy plates rattle as they pulled back into the wall on their hydraulics. Another female soldier emerged. "Attention, everyone! I need you all to move quickly forward through the escape hatch and out of the way. Once you enter each room, a ladder will lead you down into the individual pods. The computer will take control once you are inside-"

Fayt did not hear her finish. The shaking was too much, the sound of the ship shuddering itself apart (what a horrible thought, but the way it sounded, the way it felt, how could it be anything else?), the flashes of light outside, it was all too much. Something unspoken hung in the air and said that there was no time. The crowd did not resume their line but surged forward, pushing the Federation soldiers with them, and when the door tried to close behind them it jammed halfway with a blasting hiss of air and a hideous rattle. People scattered, scrambling for the hangar doors. Taking Sophia's hand, Fayt pushed forward past them all.

"F-Fayt?" Sophia yelped, stumbling as she tried to keep up with him. "Where are you going? The pods are-"

He shook his head. "Everyone's fighting over these ones. There should be more in the next room." He did not think about what would happen if the large door leading to the second hangar had also jammed while shut. He did not think about what would happen if all of the pods in the back had been fired already by the earlier evacuees. He thought about the feeling of Sophia's sweat burning in his cut palm. He thought about what his father had told him, that he had to protect her. He thought about the Rossettis and prayed that there really were enough escape pods after all.

When they approached the door in the back it did not open and he felt a hot spike of panic rise up inside of him, but Fayt did not slow. He pulled to the side instead, first pressing the emergency open console beside it and then, when it did not respond, closing his hand into a first and slamming it down on it. Pain flared up through his hand, shooting into his arm, but the door clunked noisily open. Air gushed out of the walls around the panels, hot and heady with a strange machine stink. He could not imagine a way that it could have been a good smell, and rushed through, tugging Sophia along behind him again. There was no one in this back hall—yet. It was certain that someone would notice soon and follow. Knowing that, Fayt ducked into the first door he could get to open. Some were too badly jammed.

Inside the small, narrow room, Fayt released Sophia's hand. He heard her fall back a few steps behind him as he hurried forward and crouched down by the metal ladder descending through a hole in the floor. A cursory glance revealed the soft lights of an escape pod's tiny one-person cabin below. He heaved a short, massive sigh. "Good, the pod's still here." He looked up to Sophia, and rest one hand on the edge of the hole. "Get in, quick. I think we're running outta time."

But Sophia did not climb in as he told her. She took one step forward and then balked, shaking her head. "Fayt...I...I'm scared."

"Don't be." He realized it was an absurd thing to say and straightened, standing in front of her. He reached out and took her arms briefly, giving a faint squeeze. "I mean it. Don't worry."

"But-"

"A Federation ship will pick our pods up in no time. We'll see each other at Remote Station Six. I promise." He let go, but not before turning her towards the open hatch and nudging her forward. "Now come on, get in. Let's go."

_Still _she balked-maddeningly, infuriatingly, and the urge to simply shove her inside was as tempting as it was sudden and horrible. She looked back at him over her shoulder with wide eyes on the verge of tears. There was a still a tiny crease in her cheek from where she had slept on his shoulder. He wanted more than almost anything to reach up to her face and smooth it for her. "You'll follow, right?"

"Yeah."

"Promise?"

"Right behind you. I promise!" Just please, just _please_ get in the damn _pod_. He heard something that sounded like rending metal. He knew it only from the horrible escape in the evacuation tunnels and Sophia opened her mouth and somehow, for some reason, he felt a horrible wave wash over him, like the strange despair he had felt looking at her in the combat simulator now so much less out of place. Before she could say anything, he turned her again and pulled her close, into a tight hug. Her face pressed into his chest and he could feel her shaking everywhere. He had not been able to see it. Maybe it was only the ship. Maybe she was not shaking at all. Maybe it was only him. "_I promise._"

She held him briefly, just as tightly, and then they released each other. No more words were exchanged. They took a long look at each other's faces, and then she was gone down the ladder. He watched her mousy brown hair bob as she descended and stood over the hole until the pod hatch closed over it, shutting her off from view.

He could not silence the part of him that thought it might be for the last time.

Fayt knew that he must have been dazed, because he did not even realize that he had left the room and re-entered the hallway until he felt someone take his shoulders in a firm grip and give him one hard, firm shake.

"Hey! Hey, you, are you all right?"

Fayt shook his head, then nodded. He blinked muzzily up at the taller man who had taken hold of him and finally registered him as another Federation soldier. Well, of course. All of the civilians were being evacuated first. The man nodded in return, releasing him and pointing him towards the end of the hall. "This way, quickly! There's still a pod left here."

"Right!" Fayt's stupor broke, and he ran down the hall past the man. Someone had lodged the last door open with a mechanic's pry bar. Under other circumstances it would have been a laughably primitive solution. Now, he squeezed through the narrow opening, losing a sandal in the process, and hurried lopsidedly towards the hole in the floor of this last room. His hands slipped on the ladder and he fell into the escape pod instead. It hurt, but he had to admit it was faster. He heard the hatch slam closed above him and scrambled into the single seat, fumbling with the controls as he felt the pod slide forward to the launch position from its holding bay.

A mindless flurry of beeps later, he heard the blandly pleasant computer voice chime up. "Activation complete. Ejection in ten seconds." The viewing screen in front of him showed the airlocks ahead opening into a long tunnel, one after the other, until the gleaming white hall opened finally into the huge and trackless black beyond. Only moments after the final one opened, he heard the rush of the small engines and his pod shot forward. Almost before he could blink, he was outside and clearing the ship. The long blue contrails of the other pods punctuated the battlefield all around him, streaming away from the ship even as the red lines of Vendeeni fire shot towards it between them.

Suddenly a huge flare popped behind him, brightening space for a single moment before blinking out again. The escape pod lurched and rumbled, shaking and tumbling wildly. Fayt slid in his seat, reached for the safety harness. He could not fit it into place and so simply clung to it for dear life in the face of the terrible unknown turbulence. He did not ask the computer what it had been. He did not want to know. He closed his eyes, and pretended that he did not.

When he opened them again, his view screen was wild with static and the pod was careening straight into the great red mass of a Vendeeni warship. He heard a huge shrilling sound and realized that it was the sound of his own screaming in the confined space. "Computer, redirect! _REDIRECT!"_

The computer screeched and burred with static in response. The pod continued forward. The Vendeeni ship seemed too massive to be real, too huge for even space to contain. Space seemed, between the bursts of static destroying his vision to the world beyond, to be tearing apart. It sparked and suddenly wrenched open. Where there was nothing, suddenly, he saw blue light. It burned his eyes and he almost looked away, except that he could not. Something came _out _of space, out of the vast tear, spitting light and thunder, all in eerie silence. The static cleared for one pristine moment and he realized that it was another ship. The Vendeeni ship pulled laboriously upward, trying not to strike it; the two behemoths drifting apart like great whales in a starry sea. Fayt's pod shot between them so closely he could almost feel their weight around it.

He sat rigidly in his seat, shaking for a moment, cold and clammy with sweat, and then turned to look behind himself. He could not see anything, of course—nothing but the inside of the pod. The light turned soft all around him, a calm pastel, as the tiny vessel darted into warp space. Fayt slowly settled back into his seat.

For now, there was nothing to see.


	5. 04

**DISCLAIMER:** I, The Mad Poet, do not own any Star Ocean game, publication, or related character. I am a poor fan with too much time on my hands with no money, so don't sue me. This novelization is being written solely for my own sick, twisted amusement; and views expressed herein do not reflect those of the original creators. Do not expect a replica of the game - I am One Sick Puppy. By that token, the following fanfiction and all original concepts therein are my own; do not steal them because I will find out and beat you death with a crowbar. I know where you sleep.

Expect explicit violence, mature themes, politics, crude and/or ethnic jokes, lots of prejudice, more violence, mindgames, a reality check, and enough religious references to choke a Mormon choir.

Flames will be used to work on my tan.

Much credit, love, and general adoration to Lord Batpig/Batpig Sexgod, who has helped me with so much of this - including putting up with that awful excuse for an SO game long enough to start this.

* * *

**THOU SHALT NOT**

**04**

It seemed like forever that Fayt simply sat there, watching the flashes of soft warplight passing outside of the escape pod and listening to the steady, constant repetition of the machinery's murmurs and beeps. But then, since the attacks, almost everything had seemed to last forever. He knew that it had not actually been very long at all. The sweat was still wet on his skin.

At last he reached forward and pressed a small button. He did not need to check to see which one it was. Ship evacuation drills were standard for everyone who traveled. He had never thought that he would need them, and found them annoying at the time, but now the routines came back as naturally as breathing and he found himself glad for the seemingly endless repetitions. "Distress signal operational," the generic woman in the computer informed him. He did not know if it was comforting or irritating that none of this, or anything, had or could ever have rattled her or her billions of identically programmed sisters. He nodded as if it could have seen him.

"Searching for life-supporting planets," she told him. He nodded to her again, realizing that it was silly and strange to think of the computer as a 'her' at all even as he did so. He did not even have the time to complete the thought before she chimed up again with the good news: "Planet found."

"Where?" It didn't matter.

"Vanguard III," she responded, "located approximately 0.5 light years from present location. Axial tilt of 35 degrees results in extreme seasonal weather. Existence of humanoid lifeforms confirmed." Fayt nodded again with each short stop. The steadiness of the action was somehow reassuring. "The Federation has classified Vanguard III as an underdeveloped planet. Civilization level: approximately equivalent to sixteenth century Earth. Would you like to review the Underdeveloped Planet Preservation Pact?"

For a moment, Fayt did nothing except to move his head in another faint nod. When he realized this he closed his eyes and let out a long breath. "...Yeah," he said after a moment. He could not remember what the Pact said. It was something distant and unimportant to his life, until now, for anything outside of brief mentions in school assignments or the odd news clip. He took a moment to wonder what other things he might need that he had relegated as unimportant and forgotten before the computer began its playback. "Just the important parts." The computer stopped, and began again.

"The Underdeveloped Planet Preservation Pact was established in order to protect planets with developing civilizations." The voice chimed obligingly. "Contact with civilizations that have not reached a certain level of development is strictly prohibited by Federation law. This is due to the fact that contact with advanced civilizations has a high probability of greatly influencing the course of history on a less developed planet. All individuals and organizations belonging to the Pangalactic Federation are required to adhere to the tenets of this Pact, unless faced with a clear danger to life and limb. This Pact is one of the most important components of Pangalactic Federation law and also serves as a guideline for civilian conduct in emergency situations. Violators are tried before the Pangalactic Council."

The computer stopped then and Fayt took a moment to turn it all over in his head. He nodded again and almost laughed at himself for doing so. "They should make these computers with eyes."

"Command not recognized. Please repeat command."

"Nothing. How long until we get there?"

"At our present speed of Warp Six, arrival is estimated in 144 hours."

Almost a week. With everything that had happened only in the last day, six seemed an impossible span of time. It was as if an entirely new and terrible world of possibilities had opened up to him. In six days, why, the whole world could end. He suppressed a faint shudder. It was better not to think like that. Such things were the realm of fantasy and fiction, of grandiosely melodramatic adventure games. They were not like the simpler impossibilities of war, which he had suddenly found not to be impossible but simply distant from his sheltered life; they did not happen in the real world. The real world, he had found, had more than enough horrors of its own. Escape pods, after all, were equipped to maintain an adult humanoid for up to a week. Six days was cutting it very close to that limit. "Are there any foreseeable problems in getting to Vanguard III? How about energy reserves?"

"No foreseeable problems," the computer reassured blandly. "An adequate supply of energy and food is on board. All systems are operating within normal parameters."

"Is..." He stopped, closing his mouth again even as he opened it. Was there anything else to question? The escape pod would direct itself automatically; even if something were to go wrong, Fayt did not have the knowledge or ability to pilot it or even override its most basic functions. If something went wrong, if the energy reserves had to be diverted and its life of a week was cut to mere days, he did not know how to repair it or even if such a thing was possible. Once again he found that he was helpless except to allow himself to be cradled in the arms of modern convenience, and once again he found that he could not think of it as anything but for the best. "I'm...I guess I'm going to get some sleep. Notify me if anything happens."

"Affirmative."

He could not sleep for an entire week, but for now he closed his eyes on the inescapable truth as the pod's controls hummed and beeped all around him.

He was not Adonis. And he never could be.

_There was a figure in the light, the figure of a man, but he could not reach it. He was small and contained, though he did not know by what. He could reach nothing. Help me, he tried to say, but he could not be heard over the sounds all around, the small sounds of machines. Help me, he tried to say, but he had no voice._

_ There was a figure in the fire, the figure of a man, but it did not burn. It was massive and free, though he did not know from what. Nothing could reach it. "RESIGN THYSELF," it said, and the sound swallowed the sounds all around, the small sounds of machines. "RESIGN THYSELF," it said, but it had no voice._

_ It spoke from inside, and the containment shattered around its magnitude. He was released, but he was not freed. Outside was only light. Outside was only fire. _

_ Outside, there was no world._

_ He was erased._

"Now entering Vanguard III's gravitational field. Prepare for entry turbulence."

Fayt awoke with a start as the pod began to tremble and shake, his head pounding and his face hot beneath a sheen of cold sweat. He could feel it in a river down his back, in trickling streams down his arms amid a sea of goosebumps. He could smell it sharply in the closed air. "What?" The pod lurched again, though the colored monitors all around him continued to glow with the reassuringly muted colors of normal functioning, and he gripped the edge of the seat. "What?"

"Now entering Vanguard III's gravitational field," the computer repeated. "Some entry turbulence is normal."

Wiping a hand over his face, Fayt felt the roughness of a bandage over his healing palm scratch across his skin. He could not remember applying it. He could not remember any of the the hundred and forty four hours passing, not with this pounding in his skull, deep and hot like a fist of embers in the center of his brain. "Did I...really sleep through everything?" He looked around dazedly, unable to feel anything but a kind of dull disbelief as the image on the faintly vibrating view screen did, indeed, display a planet; all blues and greens and pale cloud formations in the high atmosphere tinted vaguely ocher where the shadow of the planet began dusk and night. He could not have have slept through everything, it was as impossible as to have remembered nothing, yet he felt as though he had simply closed his eyes and somehow passed it all by. He rubbed at his face again. "Computer, confirm...this is Vanguard III?"

"Affirmative," the computer chimed mildly. "Preparing landing sequence protocols."

"How much time has it been?"

"Approximately 144 hours have elapsed since pod deployment."

He stared at the image on the screen, the planet becoming a horizon curve; the great cloudforms becoming more encompassing than defined as the pod plunged towards and then into them. It was very clearly real and there. Had he really been so tired? No, of course not. The rough texture of the bandages assured him that he had been awake, at least, long enough to apply them. Had his state of shock really been so deep that an entire week, however uneventful, had simply vanished into it? Was it better, or worse to have simply forgotten? He did not know. He closed his hands, digging the knuckles into his eyes. "I'm losing my mind," he groaned.

"This computer is not equipped to render psychiatric assistance."

At that, he could not help but laugh faintly. All the advancements in the world, and they still did not have a computer that seemed to recognize a figure of speech. "That's okay. Just get me down in one piece."

"Affirmative. Please stand by for landing."

Fayt leaned back in his seat, half looking at his hand, half watching the screen. Between his splayed fingers he could see the pod descending into a deeply wooded area, the forms of the trees, their leaves yellowing with an autumn season, familiar even if the planet itself was not. There was a final rocking motion and a soft thud of sound from below as the pod settled itself down amid the stocky trunks, and after a moment the viewing screen flicked off. Above him, he heard the faint hiss of the airlock releasing. "Landing confirmed," the computer noted. "Releasing door locks." They thumped solidly overhead, then silence for a moment before the door opened, clanging back against the body of the hull, and dim grey light began to filter down amidst the artificial glow that had, for the past week, been the only illumination to touch the cabin. Now it looked almost eldritch, swirling down motes of dust and fall pollen into a world not meant to know either. For a moment, Fayt simply leaned his head back against the seat and squinted up at it, watching it come down.

"Well," he said at last, and for a moment no more than that. He checked the bandages on his hands and found them satisfactory, the wounds beneath all but healed in any case, and then began to climb the ladder up to the exit. He paused at the top, shielding his eyes from a new onslaught of meager light and blinking around at his new surroundings. The air tasted sharp and wild with greenery and, after the closed and circulated atmosphere of the escape pod, somehow massive as if every inhalation drew in the scope of the entire planet. It was cool in way that was almost cold, conjuring images of autumn frosts, a phrase known to him only from classroom literature half-remembered. The calls of wildlife were foreign to him; he did not know from what manner of creature they might come. Though the trees had been familiar from a distance, their leaves and bark were strangely shaped and colored. When he looked down to the forest floor, the ground foliage seemed subtly surreal - close to what he knew, but somehow not quite right. It was not the first time he had been on a different planet, of course. But he had never done so alone, and never outside of the landscaped confines of cities or resorts. Somehow, that made worlds of difference all on its own. He took a deep breath, and closed his eyes for one moment to steady himself. "Well," he said again. "Here we go."

He jumped down from the pod, landing in a crouch. The ground was hard but cushioned by a soft and faintly mulchy layer of forest detritus beneath his sandal, and he could feel tiny lifeforms, probably insects, squirming through it beneath his knee. He stood quickly, a bit too much so, and was just as quickly forced to sit on the foreign ground. He did not lean back, having only the pod behind him. He could feel it radiating heat from the friction of entry and cold from the cooling systems beneath the surface which had kept it from igniting the local plant life. Instead, he looked up to the overcast sky. If no one had made contact with his pod in the week it had taken him to arrive, he supposed that must mean that no one would be there to rescue him for some time yet, perhaps a few more days. It certainly could not take any rescue efforts much longer than that to narrow down the number of appropriate planets near enough for the survivors' pods to head towards.

But a few days was still a lot of time for things to go wrong.

"I'd better keep my eyes out," he murmured, and reached back to pull his quad scanner from his pocket without thinking about it. Even as he realized what a foolish thing this was to do - surely it had been dropped, or crushed somewhere in the chaos of his escape - he was surprised to feel his hand close over the smooth casing of the folded pocket computer. He blinked at it in surprise as he pulled it out, but then shrugged it off. They were built to last, after all. Even the military used them. And he was certainly glad to have it. There was no telling what he might run into on an underdeveloped planet, after all...and, sure enough, as he flipped it open and began tapping through the touch screen controls to bypass the everyday applications of communication and scheduling and keeping track of his favorite sports teams or the latest game releases to those functions which it had been made for, scanning and surveying processes he had never expected to rely on for his life, its proximity scanner picked something up nearby and moving quickly. An animal, maybe. Dangerous? There was no way to know. He looked to the side, into the thick alien undergrowth, but it gave away none of its secrets. "Here there be monsters," he said softly. He had meant it as a joke, but the humor somehow fell flat in the face of the potential reality.

For a moment he sat in silence, considering that, and then suddenly snapped the scanner shut again and rose to his feet. He should make himself a weapon, he decided, just in case. The escape pod's replicator should be able to manage that. He brushed himself off as he turned back to the pod's hull, searching for the external controls for a moment before he found the panel that protected them and pried it open. It occurred to him as he did so that the best match to this planet's level of development - the weapon least likely to land him in front of the Pangalactic Council for UP3 violation when all was said and done - was a sword.

He was not sure if that should make him smile or not, but when he input the commands to the pod's system and it obligingly provided him with the weapon - forging it, it seemed, out of nothing but light, a long, simple blade on a short, simple pommel - he found that it did relieve him. Closing his hand around the smooth grip sent a shiver through him, like lightning in his veins. The replicated materials were featherweight, balanced with computer precision; perfect in such a way as something crafted by man or even a more basic machine could not have copied. But for all of that, it was _real_. For all that the sensations were familiar to him from the simulators, no machine or computer in the world could duplicate the feeling of that knowledge of reality. This was not the weight of a virtual sword, as those he had hefted so many times before, escaping into foreign forests made safe by the promise of save files and restarts, of a world beyond the shutdown commands that would end the game when he grew tired. It was a real object, a real weapon, designed to keep a real person safe from real danger, and as he swung it for the first time, even hoping against hope he would not be called upon to use it, he found the idea still filled him with as much exhilaration as fear. He closed his eyes for a moment, holding the weapon up before him and taking a deep breath. It seemed like the first bit of luck to come his way since the attack.

_Please_, he thought again, _don't let me have to use this thing. _He swung it again, one way and then the other, and knew that he could if he had to. It felt right. He had cut down hundreds of foes in simulation with the same such blade. If it came to that, he had been ready to do the same with a broken pipe in the evacuation center. Something about the thought, everything, struck an ill chord, and lacking a sheath Fayt plunged the sword abruptly point-down into the ground. He backed away from it a step and wiped his hands on the legs of his shorts, then pressed the heels of his palms against his eyes. He breathed deeply and slowly. His head still ached.

When he lowered his hands again, Fayt realized that the light, already dull when he had arrived, was slanting and growing dimmer. It would be sunset soon enough, and then night. He should find someplace safer to stay, he thought...if there was any such place here.

He reached for his scanner again, flipping the casing open and poring through functions. Could it find shelter for him? He did not know. He had never been called upon to find out. He pressed holographic buttons and slid his finger along floating half-there image screens until suddenly the display bloomed with readings at the outer edge of its search. He expanded the range and found humanoids, some two-dozen clustered together in a relatively close proximity to each other. He frowned down at it slightly. "A...village, maybe?" He could hear the hope and uncertainty grappling each other in his voice, but what he did know for certain was that it was not too far away. If he started now, he might still be able to make it there by nightfall.

_You could stay here, _a small and reasonable voice in the back of his mind piped in. _The pod would provide shelter and protection. There's food and water and it would keep you warm, as well as safe from animals. You wouldn't risk violating the UP3. When the rescue party came, you'd be right here with the distress signal. There's no reason __**not**__to stay. _It was common sense, he knew, and what all of it boiled down to was that he not only could but _should_ stay here because it was the safest and most reasonable course of action. Safe and contained with the small, inhuman sounds of the machines.

He snapped the scanner shut and jerked his chin up. "I'll go," he said firmly, not to anyone in particular except, perhaps, the small reasonable voice inside that sounded so much like Sophia's. "I know it's a UP3 infringement, but it's an emergency. They'll cut me some slack if I keep a low profile."

The small voice said nothing. Fayt turned back to the pod, briefly, tapping the external controls again. It would not take him long to make his way to the village, but he replicated a light poncho to keep him warm and cover his foreign clothing, and a sheath for his sword to strap to his back. Though the synthetic materials mimicked natural counterparts, he suspected they would not stand up to close inspection without raising questions. He did not, however, intend to let anyone get close enough to do so. As long as he was careful, he was certain everything would be all right. He covered the pod with leaves and branches from the ground to camouflage it in the deep woods. That would not stand up against close inspection either, but the area did not look well traveled and he hoped that that would be enough.

He wrapped the poncho around himself and slung his sword over his back, telling himself that he was Adonis, that there was nothing to fear, that he was a real man of the dark ages, a rough-edged vigilante, perhaps; anything to make it easier when he turned his back on safety and reason to plunge into the dimming green unknown.

It was like fighting his way through a nightmare.

In his life before, the forests he had traversed on earth or any other world had been carefully arranged and maintained to provide a place for outdoor hikes or picnics; artificial approximations of a natural phenomenon. They had wide, clearly marked routes with soft, even mossy ground, and the undergrowth was cleared well away. They were airy and bright and open, the manicured trees widely and carefully spaced except in the odd aesthetic copse or grove. In his simulation games, there had been tightly packed wood and undergrowth to be sure, rough and wild, but only around and outside of cleared paths to the exit or objective. What grew in the winding roads he had been meant to take there had not been obstacles but scenery - an easily bypassed rock here, a large bush to step around or duck behind for cover there. For their closeness and rough edges, he had somehow imagined that these were more true to the reality of the wild than the park woods.

The idea seemed laughable now. Though he had landed in a clearing, in this forest there were no roads at all. What must have been animal paths, too narrow and often too low to be of use to him, snaked off here and there marked only by tiny snapped branches or subtle impressions in the ground cover. The stocky trees grew thickly together or staggered unevenly apart with no visible rhyme or reason, their branches wild and straggling, sometimes reaching down into the undergrowth to catch and scratch. Fallen branches and old logs fetid with rot littered the ground, sometimes blocking his way entirely. Much of the ground cover was a net of roots and vine plants thinly concealed by fallen leaves in drifts of faded yellow and a decidedly un-autumnal ashen grey, spindly ferns wavering up out from between the knots. These had cushioned him when he jumped to the ground from his escape pod, but now they tripped him when he stepped and concealed the vast seeking webs of above-ground tree roots. The earth below them was hard and uneven, rising and falling unpredictably, sometimes leaving great rocks to thrust up like slick, naked red-black trees into the surface world and sometimes sending him lurching when he found only a drop or hole hidden beneath the floor of roots, from small gullies to greenery-spangled cliffs that seemed to cut the forest asunder into vast tiers and plateaus. He quickly found himself glad for the bandages wrapped around his hands, for they kept his palms safe when he was forced to catch himself time and time again. By the time he thought to use his sword as a walking stick and feel his way, his fingers were raw and sore, but even this action offered his feet no such respite. The sandals he had worn so comfortably on the soft, warm beaches of Hyda offered them no protection from rocks or brambles, leaving them quickly bruised and bloodied. The straps began to chafe, digging deeper as the skin grew raw and began to swell. He could feel blisters forming and breaking at his heels, leaving him limping. He did not at any point see the animal - or whatever it had been - that his quad scanner had picked up, but he could hear things moving just outside of his line of vision, sometimes close and sometimes seeming far, far away, small and furtive. They scratched in the brush like the certainty scratched in the back of his mind that he had made the wrong choice and should head back to the pod; that he could not find his way to it any more if he tried; that he should, perhaps, resign himself, if only to spending the night in the open.

When he stumbled into another clearing at last he nearly wept with relief; when he saw the vines and and ferns tramped down as if under the traffic of many feet, the branches and bushes clearly cut back away to form a deliberate path, and realized that it was not a clearing but a road, he thought for a moment that he had. Certainly, his vision wavered liquidly for a moment and his throat tightened. He made a faint sound without really knowing or caring what it was, and for a moment simply leaned on his sword and enjoyed the feeling of knowing that he was near some form of civilization again. He could hear voices from nearby. They were too far and too jumbled for his communicator to translate, but they sounded wonderful, and when he had steadied himself he put his sword across his back once more and headed towards them.

It was not, however, the village that he had expected to see which greeted him around a large rock formation. Instead, four humanoids - males and adolescents, if he were called upon to guess - milled about in the center of the overgrown road. They all looked about the same to him, dirtily pale-skinned, short, stringy-skinny and gangly. Long ears jutted out from beneath shaggy russet or black hair like those of strange furless lop rabbits, the pointed tips drooping down past their jawlines. They wore coarse-looking woven clothing both undyed and in earthy tones, all belted into layers of vests and tunics and longcoats. In spite of that, and the cold, their calves were exposed below short pants, and their filthy toes stirred at the viney ground cover over the edges of mis-sized strap sandals. They wore knives at their belts, except for one, who toyed with his weapon uneasily, petting the side of the blade like an unfamiliar animal. Beyond them Fayt could see the crumbling rock walls of some kind of ruins, stained with weather where they peeked out from a veil of vines. Soon, the forest would reclaim them.

The young men did not talk any more - they had stopped when Fayt had come into view, and now they simply watched him as he watched them in return. He did not come any closer, but stayed by the rocks.

"Hey," one of them said after a moment. "Stop right there." The delay from his translator was minimal, and, he knew, would vanish entirely with only a sentence or two more to adjust; the sounds and patterns they made, as with most 'human' classified aliens, not too unlike those of at least one terran language. Fayt nodded, not having intended to come any closer just yet. His scanner's reading had suggested quite a few more people here; he did not want to come across hostile at all, but especially to an overwhelming force. "This is a dead end. You get outta here." The young man paused a moment, looking first at his fellows and then back at Fayt. His eyes lingered over Fayt's shoulder - on the hilt of the sword, Fayt realized - and his own hand dropped down to the haft of his knife. "Yeah. You just turn around and get outta here here right now, and we won't tell anyone you were here at all."

The other young men nodded solemnly, ears bobbing lightly with the motion. One of them was not much more than a child. Fayt raised his hands slowly, holding them out to the sides with the palms forward in a show of no harm. "I'd like to go past. Can you let me through, please?"

The passive stance seemed to embolden the spokesman, and his wary expression curled into a sneer. "What? What kind of fool are you? You expect me to just smile, nod my head, say 'yes sir' and let you through? We're guarding the road to make _sure _no one gets through!" He even stepped forward a bit, shoulders back, chest puffed up a bit. Trying to make himself look bigger, Fayt thought with a trace of amusement. It was almost funny how much bolder they'd grown with Fayt's hands away from his own weapon, as if he could not simply reach up and take hold of it. "So _no, _you _can't _go past us."

His hand did not leave the knife though, and that was not funny at all. The other three had not come any closer, but they continued to watch him. Their eyes were dark and glossy, like the rocks, and they kept their hands close to their blades, like the leader. "If you don't," one said, "we don't mind teachin' you a lesson."

"Painful lesson," the smallest one echoed. "Cut you up good."

Fayt grit his teeth, feeling his hands twitch at the threats, but did not move from the submissive posture. They were just locals, he reminded himself - citizens of an underdeveloped planet, probably with no martial training to speak of, and now that the one with the drawn knife had come closer he could see that they were not real weapons at all but the kind of implements one might take from a kitchen. Could he take these would-be thugs in a fight if it came to that, his sword against their knives? Certainly. But he was tired, terribly tired, brutally sore, and there were four of them against one of him, more if they called for any of the others his quad scanner had detected earlier. He was far less sure that he could take them in a fight without being forced to do them serious harm in the process. So when he finally moved, it was to take a step back. "All right," he said, and watched them puff up more at his surrender, triumphant gleams entering their eyes. He could almost imagine what was going through their heads, seeing an armed trespasser back down before their superior strength, all of that, bolstering their uncertain swaggers further. It would be worse, he thought, for any traveler who passed this way after him...but there was nothing to be done about that now. "All right. I'll take your advice."

The spokesman stepped forward even as Fayt stepped back, free hand on his hip as he gave a smug nod. "Yeah, see? We understand each other." He gestured imperiously with one hand, but left the other on his knife. Puffed-up, maybe, but not stupid. "Now scram! I don't want to see you back here again, ever."

Fayt took another step back. If he took one to the side, now, he would be hidden by the rock formation again. "Just one thing before I go, please."

"Are you stupid?"

He grit his teeth again, sucking a breath in through them. He let his eyes flick to the lengthening shadows, the thick blackness spreading beneath the cover of the trees where light could not easily pass, and let the breath out again slowly. He had counted on finding a village here. The small reasonable voice in the back of his mind clamored to be heard; he thought it must want to say _I told you so. _And maybe it had. But he was a long hike away from his escape pod now, night was quickly closing in, he was sore and tired, and while he had not found what he wanted or expected the discovery was still enough to make him want to keep trying before he surrendered to the forest maze. These four and their kitchen knives, after all, had to have come from _somewhere._ "I'm a traveler, and I don't know these woods. Is there a settlement of some kind nearby? I'm very tired."

There was a pause. Again, the thug looked over Fayt's shoulder consideringly for a moment before lifting the hand that had rest on his hip and pointing off through the forest. "...If you've got nowhere to go, might as well go to Whipple."

One of the others tittered slightly. "That's _nowhere_, all right."

The spokesman ignored his fellow. "Just follow the road east. You stir up any trouble, or tell anyone about this place out here though-"

"No, no," Fayt assured him, slowly lowering his hands but still holding them passively out to the sides. He took another step back for good measure. "Not a word. Sorry for trespassing."

To this, the young man only grunted slightly, another short "get lost," and waved him off. They were done with him it seemed, but they did not stop watching as Fayt withdrew several more steps, not turning his back on the sentries until he had passed out of their line of sight behind the rocks. He did not hear them start to move about or talk amongst themselves again right away either, except for muted whispers neither he nor his translator were able to make out. They were as wary of him as he was of them, which was only fair - he was an armed stranger and looked nothing like them. In retrospect, he supposed that he should have been prepared for that, but it was too late now. He should have been prepared to get lost and marked his way along the trees, or something like that, as well, but he hadn't thought of that at the time either.

For now, he pulled out his quad scanner again, looking briefly over his shoulder to be sure none of the four thugs had come around the rock to tell him off again. They had not, and so he checked where he had been directed, off to the east. It was easier to find the function he needed than it had been the first time, and soon the screen displayed a number of humanoids clustered together, much as it had before. This time however he could see a second cluster at the edge of his reading, more than were in the original location - the one he had taken for a village but had, in fact, only turned out to be whatever ruins the four thugs were guarding. In a game, that would make it a den of thieves and bandits for the hero to clear out for the sake of the gentle villagers up the road, and while it might still be the former of those he hoped that he was able to steer clear of it in the future. Either way, the new reading suggested that the village was still some ways away. Could he still make it before nightfall? On a proper road, where he would not be forced to stumble blindly through the undergrowth and constantly stop to check his bearings on the scanner, he thought that he just might. He closed the quad scanner and tucked it back into his pocket, then stepped away from the rocks back to the center of the road, and began to follow it east.

It was not long before he began to notice the newness of it. Except that that was not entirely right; the rut of the road was deep and well-settled, and so it was not 'new' at all. But much of the brush that had been cut away from the edges had been cut only recently; the broken edges of branches winked sharp and pale from the darkness of the forest edge, and much of the cleared brush was still piled along the edges of the road. Many of the trampled plants in the road were withering but still green, and in several places he was still forced to step around the knotted surface roots of the trees. At one point, he saw an uprooted sapling tossed against the rocks, and the gap it had made in the vine cover in the middle of the path. While it certainly had been a road for a long time, he thought that perhaps it was only just recently being used for that purpose again. But, that made sense. Didn't it only lead to ruins, after all? Maybe only games and developed planets found such things fascinating. Certainly the ones he knew of in reality had not held monsters or great treasures, only history.

Fayt was not sure how long he picked his way along the road to the east. The light, which had grown dim, seemed to remain that way for an eternity, never quite descending into night or even true twilight. The sky above him was heavy and grey, and he could not see the sun for either the clouds or the cover of the trees and rising forest tiers. He felt both lighter and heavier than he should have. Had the computer told him this planet had lighter gravity than earth? Heavier? The same? He tried to remember if the computer had told him, if he had even asked, but could not. But no of course it couldn't be heavier because the natives would have looked stronger, more solid, and it certainly couldn't be lighter, could it, because should he really be so tired if it was? Perhaps it was a week of sudden forced inactivity after the frenzied exertion of the evacuation from Hyda that left him feeling so sore and exhausted. Perhaps he was at a higher elevation than he had thought, and the air was thin. With the forest rising and falling the way it did, there was no way to tell simply by looking around, and he did not know how to check such a thing on his scanner. He made a note to figure it out when he found a place to rest. For now, he was eventually forced to draw his sword again - not to fight and not to balance him against treacherous footing, but simply to hold himself up against the desire to slump to ground and rest.

Eventually, he noticed the forest beginning to fall away from around him, not vanishing but thinning, and the vine-straggled old road linked up with another. The new road was not green and grey with vines and trampled ferns, but instead open and bare, the dirt a brazen, glaring russet color that jarred his eyes after so long staring at the monotonous shades of the forest. He blinked at it several times, until he could pick out the myriad footprints, layers on layers, some fresh and some only visible as faint and crumbling impressions dried into temporary solidity, before stepping out onto it himself. The texture felt strange under his sandals. Clay? No, that was not it. It was too soil-like, and the trees still grew up out of it. What difference did it make? He realized that his mind was beginning to wander. How far until the village? He realized that he was afraid to check his scanner. It had looked closer from there. What if it was still far away? What would he do?

He did not know, and so he continued forward instead. The trees continued to thin, giving way to more rocks, black and brown and red, thrusting up both bulbous and geometric, glittering with metallic bands. He watched them to give himself something to focus on. He had been walking forever. His feet, screaming with pain, had gone blessedly but frighteningly numb. Night had come and gone and he had not noticed, he was certain; come and gone and come and gone again, over and over. He could see the rocks rising out of the ground as watched, pressing themselves higher, trees like twisted fingers scratching the heavy sky.

His sword skidded across the ground, kicking up dirt, and his knees struck the road. He had not seen the rocks rising - it was him that was moving, falling, as his support slipped from his stiff, numb fingers. He tried to rise, putting a hand on his knee, and was surprised to see that it was bloody again. No, how could that be a surprise? He had fallen so many times. Maybe he would rest for a moment after all - and so he did, keeping his head down, breathing heavily. The red soil of the road blurred in and out of his vision, footprints vanishing and appearing again with each ragged inhalation. Were there more here than there had been further out, or were his eyes playing tricks on him? "It looked so close...on the scanner..." Who was he talking to? Was he making excuses? Who was there to hear him?

_ I'm supposed to be stronger than this, _he told himself, _I'm supposed to be some brainless muscleman, isn't that what she said? _He lifted his head, looking for his sword. It was right there in front of him; if he picked it up, he could lean on it and make it the rest of the way. He knew that he could because he was supposed to be stronger than this, _was _stronger than this, refused to be anything _but _stronger than this. He took his hand from his knee and stretched it out, reaching for the simple pommel. Simple and hard and real.

He remembered the sword being light, but now it was too heavy. His fingers would not close around it, and he could not lift it up. His trembling legs buckled beneath him, dropping him forward. He realized as his chest hit the ground that he was going to faint at the same moment that he told himself how ridiculous that was; he couldn't _faint_, not here, not like this. His cheek struck the ground as well, breath scattering grains of dirt from in front of him. They became like mountains, every one, red and black and brown, jagged and rising, smooth and slick. _Hematite, _his brain provided sleepily. _And iron. The ground is red because of oxidization. There must be so much. _He thought of the dirty, pale young men with their kitchen knives and wondered if it was also in their hair, their russet hair, rusting them away. How silly. What a silly thing to think.

He thought he heard someone calling to him, but that was silly as well. Who would be calling to him here? The sound of footsteps crunching through the dirt was massive. Suddenly the world seemed very bright. The light hurt, so he closed his eyes. Something small and warm touched his face, almost hot against the chill of the endless evening before it was torn away, the crunching sound like a roar in his ears, larger than the world.


	6. 05

**DISCLAIMER:** I, The Mad Poet, do not own any Star Ocean game, publication, or related character. I am a poor fan with too much time on my hands with no money, so don't sue me. This novelization is being written solely for my own sick, twisted amusement; and views expressed herein do not reflect those of the original creators. Do not expect a replica of the game - I am One Sick Puppy. By that token, the following fanfiction and all original concepts therein are my own; do not steal them because I will find out and beat you death with a crowbar. I know where you sleep.

Expect explicit violence, mature themes, politics, crude and/or ethnic jokes, lots of prejudice, more violence, mindgames, a reality check, and enough religious references to choke a Mormon choir.

Flames will be used to work on my tan.

Much credit, love, and general adoration to Lord Batpig/Batpig Sexgod, who has helped me with so much of this - including putting up with that awful excuse for an SO game long enough to start this.

* * *

**THOU SHALT NOT**

**05**

_ The roar was the fire. He had been freed, and now he was in the fire. There was no world, but there was fire. Always fire. He could feel the brightness of it stinging in his eyes; could feel the heat touching his face._

_ When he opened his eyes, he saw his father. The man looked as he had in the evacuation halls, missing one sandal, his touristy print shirt unbuttoned. He stood in front of both Sophia and Fayt's mother with his arms outstretched, protecting them from something unseen. The glow of the flames hid his blotchy sunburn as they turned the whole world shades of hellish orange-red. Fallen support struts caged them in. Fayt was free; it was now they who were contained. They were trapped in the evacuation halls, the place that he had left them. He called out for them, but the fire swallowed his words. He tried to reach them, beating against their prison, but the fire held him back. It did not burn him, but he could not reach them through it either; they were contained. _

_ Slowly, Sophia's head turned towards him. Her eyes were wide with fear, and her mouth moved though he could not hear the words, swallowed by the all-consuming roar of the flames. Help, she had said, and he somehow knew even though she had said it without a voice. Help me, help us. Simply help. _

_ There was a sharp sound of weapon fire and her head jerked forward again as if tugged on a string. Fayt could do nothing but watch as his father was suddenly struck in the chest by a bloom of red. It did not burn him, but as he fell forward to his knees Fayt watched his eyes shrivel, his jaw fall open with a belch of smoke that carried on it a stink of seared meat. He did not continue forward, but instead suddenly changed momentum, lurching back to fall on his side. He faced Fayt now, smoke curling from his empty sockets and blistered, open mouth. The red bloom struck his mother, and then Sophia. They all fell facing him, blind and mute. He could see their tongues and teeth, all blackened and charred. He tried to reach them through the fire, but while he was free they were contained. _

_ He wanted to tell them he had tried, but when he opened his mouth it spilled out a red light, a terrible, burning bloom, and the only sound that came with it was a scream._

So he screamed_ -_ heat and thrashing and screaming, sharp jags of pain; these were his impressions and sensations, nothing else. But it was dark, and as he realized that it was dark he realized that there was no fire, and the heat was inside him rather than all around. He realized that he was sitting, and the thing beneath him was padded, if only slightly. Gasping for breath, feeling the air strike his dry mouth and throat with sharp, numbing cold, he realized that his eyes were still closed. He opened them slowly, afraid of what he might see.

But there was no fire. He put a hand to his head, feeling sweat on his skin, not certain if it was hot or cold as it soaked into the bandages over his hands. "Just another...dream..." he gasped. Another? Had there been others? He could not remember, and now even the details of this one were beginning to fade, leaving him only with a hot, dry feeling in his mouth. He shook his head, trying to shed the last vestiges of it as well as the burning, throbbing ache deep in his skull. His vision blurred and flickered in time with it, full of dull greys, and he squeezed his eyes closed tightly to clear them. He counted slowly, picking out the seconds between throbs like a child trying to track thunder. When they had slowed, he opened his eyes again.

His first impression - that of dreary greys - had not been mistaken. He was in a small room, far taller than it was wide or long, the faded wooden slats of the wall visible between cracks and gaps in the pale clay or plaster that had been slathered over them for insulation at some time long in the past. Bags and crates were scattered about in odd corners; two splintered chairs jutted out from beneath a table whose cracked surface was hastily and poorly covered by a faded and threadbare cloth. A small cabinet was propped against one wall, its shelves looking ready to collapse under their meager burdens even as they had obviously been repaired, if clumsily, several times already. The entire room looked in disrepair, almost abandoned except for the lack of dust or grime, leaving it with a sense of desperate tidiness. Nothing seemed to have any real color, except for the odd spur or nail of heavily rusted iron. Even the light filtering in through the window was grey. Fayt looked down, and realized that he was in a small bed with a thinly-stuffed mattress pad, the faded blanket tangled about his body and damp with sweat. Another crate, most of its slats missing and a battered lamp set on top of it, sat between it and another small bed. His poncho had been taken away and carefully folded on a low shelf; the bandages on his hands were fresh, coarser than the ones he had applied himself, and covered even his newly-torn fingers.

He put his hands to his face and tried to think. Where was he? The answer came in a moment as he remembered - he had landed on a backwater planet, one Vanguard III, and collapsed on the road, a journey his stiff and aching body attested to the length of. If only it _were _a game, he thought bitterly, so that his time asleep would have healed him completely! But he was in a bed, and his wounds were tended. Had someone rescued him, then? His brow furrowed slightly at the thought. As much as he appreciated not being left out in the open, he had hoped to avoid such close contact-

His thoughts were interrupted by a soft sharp gasp, really more of a breath, and he jerked his head up from his hands sharply.

Near the foot the of the bed, a little girl had entered the room, and stared back at him frozen in place. She was tiny and pale, gangly, her bobbed hair russet and the tips of her long ears drooping down to her jawline. Like the young men at the ruins, her clothing was rough and worn in layers, the orange shade the color of rust and the greens deeper than anything he had seen in the forest. She held a tray precariously on her arms, a crude clay pot and cup balanced on top of it, and a plate with what he assumed was some form of food. After a moment, she moved again, toddling forward towards the rickety table. She was forced to stand on tiptoe to push the tray onto it. "I'll leave some water here, okay?" Though she had frozen at first, her voice was unafraid. She stood in place, looking at him for a moment as if to be sure he had understood her words. He nodded slowly, and then suddenly she darted back the way she had come. He heard her voice rise, calling out to someone as she went over the hollow thump-thump of her footsteps. He watched her go, brows furrowed slightly, and did not move despite the fact that his parched throat clamored for the water she had left behind. For the moment, it was as much because he was not certain his stiff, aching body would carry him as anything else. His legs felt like iron rods, his knees raw, his feet, oh God, they felt like they were stuck full of salt and nails, so that even attempting to curl his toes sucked the breath out of him and made his vision spark. He thought that if he looked beneath the blanket he would find them bandaged as well. He hoped so - he was afraid of what they might look like.

It was just as well that he had not risen. He could still hear her clamoring about, as well as a second, quieter voice, and soon the girl returned along with another child. This one was slightly older than her, as lank as the rest of them, but his eyes were solemn behind the ragged reddish bangs. His clothes were too large, and slumped from his narrow shoulders like hand-me-downs he had yet to grow into. He kept the girl slightly behind himself as if protecting her. "Are you all right?" he asked. His voice was soft and somehow sad. "You were groaning in your sleep. I heard you scream."

"I-" Fayt paused as his voice came out in a dry croak. He nodded slightly as he attempted to swallow it, and the next words came more easily. "I...think I'm fine, thanks. Were you the one who rescued me?"

The boy shook his head. "No. I just carried you here." Looking at him, Fayt found himself both incredulous and admiring; the boy was small and fragile. If he had truly brought Fayt here from the road on his own, it must have taken a feat of pure will and dedication for him to do so. The boy, for his part, looked down to the little girl almost guiltily. "It was my sister... Meena, she insisted..."

Fayt nodded. "So...Meena, you were the one who rescued me then. Thank you." She giggled in response, and scurried behind her brother's back, peering at Fayt from around him with wide eyes. The boy's arm moved again, staying in front of her. Fayt found himself smiling at the girl in spite of himself. How old was she? Not more than seven or eight, he guessed, and her brother not much older. He wondered what their parents thought of them bringing him home like this. "I guess...introductions are in order, huh? My name is Fayt. Fayt Leingod. You?"

"I am Niklas. Her name is Meena." The boy lowered his head slightly after that, eyes closed and brows drawn in. He looked to be giving something his deepest consideration, and his sister looked up at him questioningly. At length, Niklas looked up again. "Fayt... Fayt is what you said, isn't it?" Fayt nodded in response. It was hard to talk; he needed a drink. The dryness in his mouth felt as if it would swallow up the rest of him. But he did not ask for one; something in Niklas' solemn eyes belayed the question. "It is a strange name. And your clothes...your ears..." The boy hesitated a moment, obviously uncertain. His already soft voice hushed further. "Are you...one of Norton's men?"

"Norton?" Fayt frowned slightly. He looked down, wondering if his translator had been damaged in his fall. He dare not check it now, in front of the children, and so he looked up again and asked instead. "Is that a person's name?"

"Yes."

It was difficult for Fayt to say if he had ever heard a single syllable uttered with such weight or grimness of tone. He shook his head slowly. "I don't...really understand the situation here..."

There was a long moment of silence. Niklas' eyes never left him. Fayt realized they were bloodshot, puffily black and red about the edges with lack of sleep, that the grime on his face was paled in long tracks down his cheeks where he must have cried a hundred times to cut such trails. He realized that he could not hear anyone else moving about the house; that the repairs on the shelves were amateur and childish; that the frantic cleanliness and order of the room extended only so high, and the places too far for a little boy to reach were riddled with dust and new cobwebs. That a frail boy not much more than seven or eight would ask his parents to help him carry the weight of a grown man if he had them to ask.

He opened his mouth again, though he did not know what he meant to say or ask. It was just as well; Niklas spoke before he could. "You don't know Norton?"

Fayt closed his mouth again. "...No," he said after a moment. "No, actually, I've uh...never heard of him. Who is he?"

Niklas shook his head quickly, his voice just as rushed. "If you do not know who he is, then please, never mind. I apologize for the odd question." He looked away from Fayt just as quickly...but he also moved his protective arm away from his sister. Meena gave a small squeak of delight and scurried around him, running to the side of Fayt's bed and crouching down beside it to peer up at him with wonder in her great green eyes.

"You still need to recover your strength," Niklas said after a moment. "And heal your wounds. Feel free to rest here. We...cannot do much, but we do have food."

"No, that's- I mean, I'm fine." He could not impose on these children and whatever harsh times had befallen them, he knew that as surely as he knew that this was a much closer contact that he had hoped to make. He tried to rise from the bed, but was met with pain spiking along his side, spreading like jagged wings into his back and shoulder. He fell back with a gasp, stars bursting in front of his eyes. Meena let out a tiny gasp of her own beside the bed, small hands covering the startled 'o' of her mouth. "I...I mean it...really..." How hard had fallen on the road?

Something small and warm pressed against his chest. Meena had bounced up to her feet, and was trying to push him back down onto the bed with her tiny hands. "No!" She insisted. "You should stay in bed!"

"Please, rest." Niklas agreed. "And don't worry. It is our way to help each other in times of trouble."

"But-"

"When we have the least," Niklas told him, holding up both hands, "is when it is most important to share it. Please."

"I-" But he found that he could not argue with those tired, solemn dark eyes. He let himself fall back against the headboard, which creaked alarmingly and pricked his bare shoulders with splinters. "...Sorry. Thanks."

"It is no problem. Meena, let him rest." Niklas' hands fell back to his sides, and he turned to walk from the room even as his sister chirped a bright agreement from the bedside. He did not walk like a boy, but a small man with a massive weight on his shoulders.

"He looks so young, but acts so mature...like Sophia."

"Who's Sophia?" Meena chirped, and Fayt jumped slightly as he turned to look at her. The comparison had come to his mind unbidden, unwelcome, and he had not realized that he had spoken it aloud. Sophia would never be so sad and somber. Sophia still called her favorite color by the name of a child's flavored lipstick, still drew stick-cats on her assignments and dotted the 'i' of her name with hearts if she was not careful. That he could draw her into the context of such a bleak place, such a bleak child, was chilling in itself.

When he said nothing, Meena crouched down by the bed again, taking hold of the blanket and tugging at it gently. "Fayt, Fayt! Tell me, where are you from? Why are your ears so round? Who's Sophia? Huh? Huh? Tell me!"

Fayt pushed the uncomfortable thoughts from his mind, forcing a smile until it felt easy again. It did not take long; Meena was sweet, and made him want to smile. He tried to laugh, but it came out a hard croak. When Meena blinked at the sound, he coughed. "Sure," he told her. "But first...can you get me some water?"

So she fetched the water, carefully carrying the tray over to the crate by the bedside where he could reach it. He drank it all, despite the hard but unsurprising taste of iron in it, first downing whole glasses and then tapering off to gulps and sips between stories and bites of the food, which was bland but filling though there was not much. He told her about Sophia, about his trek through the forest, and somehow as he did his best to skirt around the trappings of technology and the risk they carried of UP3 violation, somehow, he did not know, letting his tales melt from half-truth into the full fantasy of Adonis. His helpless flight through the evacuation halls became a running battle stretched out from the ruins of Listia, the distant planet to a faraway kingdom, and he was transformed from a refugee to a a real man of the dark ages, a rough-edged vigilante; a hero from a far-off land on a long journey questing to find his missing friend. Meena absorbed every word of it as he became more engaged in the fantasy, her eyes shining with wonder the more he spoke, and whenever he stopped she urged him for more. She asked questions about the world, her world, like what was beyond the oceans, or the mountains, or even just the fields, and he spun tales out of whole cloth, not knowing or caring if they were possible. He took bits and pieces from a dozen games he had played and turned them into a single lifetime worthy of legends. It made him feel stronger, seeing her believe them without question. It made the pain in his body into something distant. It made him feel invincible.

They must have spoken for hours when she was called away by her brother to tend to her chores. He spent his time alone in the bed stretching and rubbing at his aching muscles, doing what he could to loosen the stiffness from them and make them obey again. He thought that he must have rested at least a bit, because more than once he blinked only to open his eyes and find himself lain flat on the bed, the coarse material of the pillow scratching against his ear, but he did not sleep and he did not dream.

He did not know if it was later that same day, or if he had somehow passed through a dreamless night into another, that he experimentally swung his legs out of the bed and placed his feet delicately on the rough boards of the floor, padded by the anonymous mercy of bandages. He did not know what time it was. Even hours ago the light had been dim and slanted, perhaps a function of the planet's tilt more than the time of day, as he had suspected before. The songs of strange birds filtered in through the window and he was still giddy with the confidence he had pumped through himself with his tales of heroism, however fictional. A man who had done all of the things he had told Meena, he thought, would not be kept abed by a simple hike through the woods. He gripped the edge of the mattress, took a deep breath, and pushed himself upright.

For a moment he thought he would fall. His legs quivered beneath him, his knees aching and crackling as he straightened. His feet howled in their pale wraps, blisters snapping in wet, painful bursts. He closed his eyes and clenched his hands at his sides, willing himself to stand tall. He swayed, but then steadied. The quivering lessened as the tight muscles in his calves relaxed every so slightly, though they still burned. He held his arms up and out after a moment, taking deep, slow breaths as he rotated his torso, then his shoulder, to be greeted by another chorus of cracks and pops and silent, singing jags of pain deep in the muscles. He winced, and sucked in a sharp breath, but despite the pain he could still move and that was the important thing.

How long had he been unconscious before waking up? He had not thought to ask, and though he could hear the sound of someone moving about the house through the thin walls he was reluctant to do so. He did not know how long he would be trapped in this place, but supposing it had been much more than a day, a rescue team might have already come and, finding no one at the site of his escape pod, gone again. It was a silly notion, of course. They would still be able to follow the weaker signal from his translator if they had come as close as that. Still, what if it _had _been damaged when he fell? What if the signal had been accidentally turned off? He was wary of checking while still in the house; it had doorways, but there was no door in the room. He should leave the house. The stretch would do him good, learning a little about the area would do him good regardless of how long he had to wait for a rescue, and more than anything knowing that his personal distress signal was still operational would do him good.

He moved slowly and laboriously to the shelf with his poncho, wincing with every step. The poncho was also nothing like the layered clothing worn by the locals, and he dearly wished now that he had a hood or hat under which to hide his short, round ears and decidedly exotic blue-black hair, but it was still an improvement, and his shorts, at least, were close in spirit if nothing else to the local clothing. Between the thugs on the road and his youthful caretakers, he had not seen an unexposed pair of calves since arriving.

He did not step away from the shelf immediately, frowning as he looked around the room. Something was still missing, though it was a moment before he was able to put his finger on just what it was - his sword. It was nowhere to be seen at all.

Of course, Fayt reasoned, that made sense. It must have made Niklas nervous bringing an armed stranger into his home, no matter much the cultural philosophy or his younger sister called on him to aid others in need. If the sword had not simply been left in the road or thrown to the trees, he imagined that the boy had still hidden it somewhere. Well, that was all right. He did not suppose that he would need the weapon if he was going to be wandering around the settled area of the village - assuming that the children did in fact live in the village - and it would not hurt to let Niklas keep it for now, especially if it helped him feel safer about his guest. Nodding, secure that this was the right decision, Fayt straightened his poncho and hobbled out of the small room.

He had been right about the house - it was not a large one, more of a hut than anything. He could see the opening of another room just across from the one he had left, and the corner of another bed peeking around it, but outside of that it was only a short hall leading to an open front area spanning the width of the building. As much or more light streaked in from gaps in the high ceiling as the windows, and straw was strewn over the floor, presumably as further insulation. The boards beneath it creaked both loudly and hollowly under his weight with every step. Here and there, knotholes in the boards were plugged with whatever odd or end seemed to have been handy at the time. A small table had been moved to a place in the middle of the room that made no sense, until Fayt noticed how badly warped and fractured the wood beneath it had become. The home was in obvious need of repair. He wondered if Niklas would accept an offer to help, if he made one.

"How are you feeling?" The boy's soft voice came suddenly and unexpectedly, and Fayt startled slightly at the sound of it. Despite the bold dark colors of the boy's clothes, he had not seen him standing against the grey wall. Before Fayt could answer him, he nodded to the table Fayt had been looking at, and the fractured floor beneath it. "Not quite better yet, I imagine. You should rest and regain your strength. Don't exert yourself."

Fayt shifted slightly. "...You want me out of here pretty badly."

Niklas shook his head. "I want you to recover safely. Meena...she likes you quite a bit."

"You though...you don't trust me."

"I do." The solemn eyes did not leave his face. "You aren't one of Norton's men."

Unsure of exactly what that meant, Fayt simply nodded, slowly. "I'm...going to try to walk a bit. Get some air."

"Be careful," Niklas told him simply, and he crouched on the floor again. Now that he knew where the boy was, Fayt could see that he was diligently repairing the straps of a set of crude sandals, such as the locals all seemed to wear. It was easy to see that they were far too large to belong to either Niklas or his sister. He watched for a moment, feeling slightly awkward, uncertain what had just happened, and then turned to the door. It was the only one in the house; he was not surprised to find that it led outside.

"Wait," Niklas said behind him, and Fayt stopped to look back at the boy. Solemnly, he rose from the floor and held the sandals out. He did not let the thick straps dangle, but had carefully folded them over the tops of the shoes. "Yours were ruined, but they weren't very good shoes anyway. You can use my father's."

Belatedly, Fayt realized that there was nothing on his feet but the bandages. He looked down to them, seeing straw from the floor stuck to the coarse material. He lifted one foot to tentatively shake some off and it felt wet and tacky when he placed it down on the floor again. "I...probably shouldn't. My feet-"

"They will be worse on open ground. Please, take them."

Niklas was right, of course. It would be stupid of Fayt not to take the shoes, and so he did with a muted 'thank you', and sat down in one of the splintered chairs to tie them on over the bandages. In the end Niklas had to help him with them, and he found himself grateful that he could blame it on the injuries making him clumsy, and not simply on his lack of knowledge of such esoterica. "...Thanks."

"Be careful." Niklas hesitated after rising, then nodded once. "You should see the apothecary while you are out. I told her you might come... I am sure she will be able to help you as well."

More close contact. He should have stayed with the pod after all, but it was too late for that now. Fayt swallowed a grimace and smiled again. The expression made it out when he stood again anyway, colored with pain. "I'll do that. Thanks."

The front room's door opened onto a long but narrow wooden walkway that appeared to wrap around the house, and there Fayt stood for a moment, looking around the village and taking his bearings of it. The house seemed to be one of only a few on a low shelf of stone, while the others were visible as roofs up a flight of steps carved into the rock wall - even the village, it seemed, was not without tiers and levels. Still, it afforded him a fair view, and he could see that Whipple was as grey and red as the path that had led to it - grey in the buildings, grey in the fences and carts and barrels, all those expected trappings of the sixteenth century village, grey even in the rooftops and smoke that sifted from their chimneys, the daylight that fell hazily over it all, and red in the oxidized, iron-rich dirt on which it rested and which coated it in a fine dusting of grime. Only a few thin trees about the edges of the village broke up the monotony with scatterings of pale green leaves, but even these were beginning to turn dull and yellow-grey with the season. The buildings he could see were all relatively uniform, at least in type, with short walls but tall straw-thatched roofs as he had seen from the inside of the children's house. Only one or two, visible over the upper ledge, were distinguished by wooden shingles, but even these looked rough.

The structures on his immediate level were built on short wooden scaffolds, elevated off of the ground. He found it unsurprising when he remembered the hollow thumps every footstep had made inside. Similarly, they all had the same walkways in front of their doors and wrapping around their edges. He wondered at the scaffolds most of all: hadn't the computer told him that the planet suffered from extreme seasonal weather? Such houses looked as though they would have been cool in the summer certainly, but impossible to keep warm in winter; he could not imagine the people having a means to do so at their low level of development. Perhaps, he thought, he would ask Meena later to tell him a few stories of her own, winter stories maybe. It would probably be as good a way of gathering information about the area as anything else he would manage out here today.

He took the steps down to the ground slowly and carefully, as much in deference to the state of the house as to his aching muscles. The short flight of stone steps carved into the wall, leading up to what he imagined would be the village proper, looked old and well-worn. He did not look forward to the idea of picking his way up those either, but he had little choice unless he wanted to welcome himself by barging into the houses of strangers and shaking them down for information. He could only imagine how well _that _would go over. It occurred to him belatedly that he had not asked Niklas where the village apothecary might be found, but to do so now would have involved heading up the rickety wooden steps again. Heaving a great sigh and settling his shoulders, he shook his head and approached the stone steps on the hillside instead. If nothing else, he could at least assure himself that these were reliable and safe to use - they looked as if they had been stolidly taking foot traffic for decades with nothing worse than a few smoothed edges to show for it.

_Find a walking stick, _urged the quiet and reasonable voice in the back of his mind. _You won't make it up the stairs on your own. _And it was right, of course, as right as it had been in the forest when it told him to stay with the escape pod, so of course he raised his chin and took a deep, bracing breath before placing his foot on the first step. The hard stone seemed to grind upwards with a will of its own against his raw foot through the borrowed sandals. The stairs seemed to stretch upward forever. If he did not take another step, he thought, he could still go back and lie down. He had never pushed himself when injured before, after all. It was not a healthy thing to do. There was no reason to start now. He could always explore the village another day, with his muscles rested and his open wounds healed.

He told himself this all the way up the steps, to the very last one. The hard-packed dirt was almost cushiony after the trek, and for a moment he simply stood there at the top, resting. There was a bit of fence around the edge of this level and he might have leaned on it for further reprieve, but it tilted and wove drunkenly around the perimeter, and did not look steady enough to support his weight. Like the home of the children, it was in desperate need of repair.

Taking a slow look around, it quickly became clear to Fayt that it was a state shared by much of the small village. The rooftops on this upper level were riddled with holes and bare patches, the buildings sported broken slats and splintering scaffolds, and, strangely, scorched-looking black smudges along their sides. A small well was nestled back in the shade of two half-bare trees, and a number of stones had fallen from its raised edge leaving it with a jagged and almost gaptoothed look. Here and there, tools and ladders had been set out as if to deal with the problem, but they too looked weathered and long since abandoned to their lonely posts. Only a wooden noticeboard, clearly recent in construction, did not show signs of wearing and breaking. Fayt squinted at it only long enough to see that it was covered in writing, and then quickly disregarded it. The translator would only help him speak and listen; he would not have been able to read the local language.

So intent was he on surveying the surrounding area that Fayt did not immediately notice that he was also being observed. People watching him from the street; people watching him from their porches; grim, pale faces peering from their windows. They all seemed to be very old or very young, except for a scattering of adolescent girls - he could guess this only from the pitch of their voices and the softer lay of their features; their bodies were as lank and straight as the men's - and one glowering middle-aged man in the street who leaned heavily on a crude cane. They were all pale, their eyes all hollow and wary, faces tired. The expressions were familiar, if only recently: they did not look like villagers so much as refugees. Some murmured amongst themselves, leaning close.

"Such strange clothes," one of the girls whispered to another, only just loudly enough that his translator fed it back to him slowly and hesitatingly. "Like the other man." They both looked at him, their dark eyes widening, and then both pulled away hurriedly when they saw him looking back and darted off among the houses with their heads down. Fayt watched them go in in confusion.

"What-"

He did not know exactly what he he had meant to ask - what words he would or could use to even begin to express his vast confusion. He did not even know that it _should_ be expressed. He had no intention of getting involved, after all, any more than he had any intention of staying. Still, the question jumped from his mouth. What were they talking about? What were they afraid of? What happened here? What kept them from fixing their homes? What made them all stare?

It did not matter that he did not know where to start. The man with the cane cut him off curtly. "You're that stranger Niklas brought back. Boy's a damn fool, getting mixed up with you after all that's happened."

"Strangers aren't welcome here in Whipple." Intoned another man, dull but defiant, from the safety of a porch. His eyes were like dark pits; one hand, where his wrists crossed over the rail, was bandaged heavily. "Take my advice, round-ears: you'd best be off at once." There was a murmur of agreement. It swept about the village like an uneasy wind.

Fayt moved his back away from the ledge, and took a step backwards. He put his hands up both in a show of peace and to show that he was unarmed. "I'm sorry. I don't mean to be any trouble-"

The man with the cane spit to one side, his long ears twitching. "When strangers come, there's naught _but _trouble. It was the same last time!"

Another murmur of agreement, stronger this time. A few faces looked away from the windows, and a few vanished from them entirely. Vanishing entirely seemed like an excellent idea, Fayt thought, except where would _he_ go? This was not some kind of game. Leaving the village and returning to the forest in this condition, and unarmed, would be potential suicide. At least, he comforted himself, the villagers did not seem to mean to drive him out in an angry mob. Their faces were as afraid as they were angry, and they hung back, stoning him with words alone...for now, at any rate. It was a cold comfort. They all seemed to be these days.

"I swear," he said sincerely, keeping his hands up, "I mean to leave as soon as I'm well again."

"If you're well enough to walk," came a woman's curt but tired voice from just off to his side, "You're well enough to leave."

Fayt jerked his head towards the voice. A woman in a stout, stained leather apron that covered from her neck down to her bare knees stood on the raised porch of one of the larger houses, its roof thatched with wood instead of straw. The slightly bent figure of an old man, his hair long and grey, nodded beside her. As he stared, the woman unfolded her crossed arms and beckoned him forward. "Well come on then, stranger. I'll not waste more time on you than I've need to." So saying, she turned on her heel and entered the building behind her. The man nodded to Fayt, and then followed her. Looking between the closing door behind them and the angry, frightened people in the streets, Fayt decided that was a prudent choice. He limped to the wooden steps and up onto the porch they had vacated as quickly as he could.

Inside, he was assaulted by a cacophony of dry, musty scents, bitter and sweet and sharp. It struck him like a blow when he opened the door, and enclosed him like a sickly smothering blanket as he closed it again behind him. Dried animal and plant specimens he could not even begin to identify were hung up around the room in sometimes morbid splashes of color, from crisp blossom clusters to desiccated paws and tongues; crude jars and pots lined shelves and tables, their contents unknown. Had it not hung open, a tattered curtain in one corner of the large front room would have cordoned off a spartan bed, beside which sat a tray-table covered in both crude, sharp metal instruments and a chipped mortar and pestle. Where the floor was not covered in straw, the wood was dappled with dark and nameless stains. It took him a long moment of staring about the room, half herbarium and half abattoir, to realize, but Fayt had quite by accident found the apothecary's home after all.

The woman pointed to the edge of the bed. "Sit, stranger."

"Fayt," he said, automatically, and then: "I'm sorry. I never meant to intrude on your village."

"Just sit," she said again, and this time he did so. She set to work immediately pulling and cutting his bandages away to examine the wounds. Fayt could see dark material caked under her short nails, and swallowed a protest. At their level of development, such primitive medicines and practices both were only to be expected, but he was afraid that she would only make it worse. Better to endure that for a few more days until the rescue came, though, than to raise further suspicions. Nothing under her nails, after all, could be that much worse than whatever might have found its way into his open wounds out in the forest.

The woman muttered over his hands and knees, but clucked and hissed in displeasure at the state of his feet. "Terrible. Terrible. What sort of traveler doesn't wear proper shoes? You would have been better in your bare feet!"

Something about that struck Fayt as both funny and curious. He remembered losing a sandal, or thought he did, but he also remembered having both as he went through the forest...or thought he did. He also thought he remembered watching mountains rise up from the earth out of tiny rocks. He had been, for whatever reason, delirious. Maybe it was something in the atmospheric composition. Maybe he had, at some point, replicated a new one and simply forgotten. He shrugged it off either way as the woman rose and turned to her terrifying array of primitive salves and powders for a solution. He was far too busy keeping his protests silent and his shudders caged to wonder about it then.

"I am sorry you had to see our village in such a way, traveler Fayt." It was the old man, this time. He stood by the door still, out of the apothecary's way. Now that they were in closer quarters, Fayt could see that his mode of dress was slightly different from that of the other villagers. He could not readily put finger on how, exactly, except that the man's knees and calves were covered. "And that we hurry you so when you are unwell. We are in truth gentle people, but you must understand these are trying times for us all."

Fayt nodded at first, but then shook his head. "I understand, but...what happened here?"

"Strangers bringing their troubles," the apothecary muttered. She plucked one final pot from her shelf and returned to the bedside, arranging her cargo alongside the tray of metal instruments as the old man shook his head.

"He came from the western road, like you did, and he still comes that way when we see him: a strange and sinister-looking man." The man nodded slowly. "We've been at his mercy since that first day. We are peaceful people, you see - not fit to fight against murderers and thieves. It's my duty to protect this village, but no matter how often I send word to our Lord, the tales are too tall and our village too remote for him to send men of his own. We are entirely on our own. The stranger's been getting bolder; I suppose he must realize it as well."

Fayt shivered a bit as he thought of the guarded entrance to the ruins and the thugs who had pointed him eastward. He may have wandered closer to a fight for his life than he had thought. The shudder was followed by a wince as the apothecary began to lance open those of his blisters that had not opened on their own and those of his lacerations that had begun to close. Both she gave the same treatment, squeezing and pinching the tissue around them before applying a cold, stinging salve to his injuries. The smell burned in his nostrils almost as much as the substance itself burned in his wounds. She was not careful about it, handling him roughly and curtly. "If there's no one left to work the fields," she snapped, "there won't be anything left to plunder. You would suppose even thugs like them would realize _that._"

The old man - the village head, Fayt now understood - nodded again. "That is why the people here are so wary of strangers...of you, traveler Fayt. I do not mean to be brusque, but when I urge you to leave as soon as you are able, it is as much for your sake as our own."

"I understand."

"We are helping you at Niklas' request, but also on his behalf. We wish no more tragedy to be brought on that family."

"...I understand," Fayt said again, softer and slower this time. All of the little pieces were beginning to come together, and it was not a pretty picture that the finished puzzle was making. Still, there were bits and pieces that did not seem to have a place. He opened his mouth to ask a question, but the old man held up one hand.

"Please," he said. "The medicines will help to ease the pain. Enough, I think, that you can leave this village and its woes. Should your wanderings take you to our Lord's city, perhaps you could also bear witness to our need."

For a moment, Fayt only looked back at the man. He understood what was being asked of him, and why, and it was in fact best for him and the villagers as well. If he left now, after all, he could still do what he should have done from the beginning and take shelter in the escape pod, instead. If he left now, he would not be able to violate the UP3 any more than he already had. He had not intended to make any close contact; if he left now, at least he would not make any more. He nodded slowly. "I'll...be heading back east."

"For the best, no doubt." But this seemed to satisfy the man, and he nodded one last time. "May the road treat you more kindly on your way out than your way in."

The village head departed, and no more words were spoken in the apothecary's cloyingly scented house. She treated his injuries in a grudging silence and wrapped them curtly, tying his sandals back on without asking, perhaps assuming that he would not be able to do so himself with the digits thickly wrapped in coarse bandage and the gritty herbal salves leaving them tingling and, when the stinging finally stopped, numb. He welcomed the loss of sensation in his feet especially, and found himself wishing he had some means by which to buy some of the medicine, however primitive, for when the effect inevitably wore off. She gave him a crude crutch to lean on and sent him on his way.

The people on the street had dispersed again when he at last left the apothecary's, though one or two seemed to have hovered about, watching the building uneasily. He kept his head down, not meeting their eyes, as he made his way down the steps, slowly on the crutch but with less pain than before. He did not linger or explore the upper portion of the town, things that he was sure would only draw the ire of the frightened locals down on him again. He stopped only by the noticeboard, and only then to resettle the crutch to a more comfortable position under his arm. He had never used one before and it bit into the tender flesh of his armpit terribly enough that he knew he would not be keeping it for long. When he had it resettled a bit, he moved on again, taking the stone steps back down to the children's home slowly and carefully. This too was less painful than before, and he was glad for it.

When he returned to the small house, Meena was sitting at the table in the front room. Her arms were folded over the top and her cheek lay on her arms, as if she had settled in to nap there, but she was not sleeping. Here eyes were open, and her head rocked gently but rhythmically as she stared forward wistfully at a small, dark object placed on the table in front of her. For the first time since he had met her, she looked terribly sad. It stung at his heart a little to see her without a smile on her face, and he realized that he could not leave, at least not now and not like this. Not until she smiled again.

So determined, Fayt hobbled forward, leaning down beside her to join her in looking at the object. From this closer vantage, it was clearly some kind of decoratively-carved wooden box, the lid propped open. "Hey, Meena," he greeted her with gentle cheer. "What's that?"

"It's my treasure box." She lifted her head, looking back up at him with a tiny smile, just a melancholy echo of the ones she had given him before. "My daddy gave it to me for my birthday."

"It is a music box," Niklas said, and Fayt jumped slightly. Again he had not seen the boy, but he heard the hollow thump of the child's footsteps well enough as he emerged from his quiet post in the hall. He had, it appeared, been watching his sister. "It was passed down through our mother's family. It is the only thing we have left from our parents. Alas..." The boy looked briefly up at Fayt, and then back to his sister. His face was pained as he watched her lay her head back down on her arms, bobbing it lightly, and Fayt realized that she moved her head to the music - music that did not emerge, and that existed only in her memory. "It is broken now, and does not make a sound."

For a moment Fayt said nothing, watching Meena along with her brother. _Don't, _urged the small, soft voice in the back of his head. Before he was quite certain what he was being warned away from, he found himself opening his mouth again: "Can I have a look?"

Both children stilled, and looked up at him. After a moment, Meena broke into a smile, brighter than before. "Sure!" she exclaimed, and pushed the box delicately towards him with her tiny hands as he stepped closer to the table. He picked it up, careful of the delicate carvings along the side and cover as he did so, and took a seat in the other chair. It was immediately obvious that the box was, indeed, a treasure despite the odd dent or scratch. It was not made of the pallid, greyish wood that composed the homes and furniture he had seen, but something strong and dark, even where the polished finish was worn thin. The lid was inlaid with detailed panels of paler wood, still not grey but a faintly rose-colored ivory. Inside, tiny gears and cogs and wires wound about each other, glittering in the murky interior light for all the world like some priceless cache. He saw the problem almost immediately - the tiny gearbox was cracked, and one of the springs that had powered it sprung. Fixing it would certainly require replacing those broken parts, but he could do that easily with his replicator.

_Don't, _ said the cautious voice again. He closed his eyes for a moment. Well, but why not? All it would take would be a trip to his pod and back. The UP3 couldn't possibly prohibit the repair of existing devices, could it? These children had carried him from the road back to their house, probably by themselves, and tended his wounds, taking a hell of a risk on the assumption that he would be a decent sort of person when he woke up. A little extra trip into the woods wasn't so much in the face of all that, was it? And if his personal distress signal had been broken after all, well, then the trip out to the pod would let him fix it.

The little voice said nothing. Fayt opened his eyes again, and gently closed the lid of the music box. "Yeah. This shouldn't be too hard. Want me to fix this for you? It can be my way of paying you back for rescuing me."

Meena's already large eyes grew even wider. "Really? Can you fix it, Fayt?"

Niklas' eyes had also grown larger, but the look he gave Fayt was almost as much doubt as wonder. "Yes...can you really do that? It is an expensive music box. They told us it would cost a great deal to fix it."

That gave Fayt pause. It was true - at this planet's level of civilization, such parts would not come cheap or easily. But he nodded anyway, and smiled. "Well, if I can get my hands on the right parts, yes. And I think I know where I can get them. It's a little ways away, but I would be happy to go and get them. I can go right now."

"But, we cannot ask you do do something like that for us!" It was the first time Niklas has raised his voice, and Fayt leaned back slightly, blinking at the boy in alarm. When he went on, the boy was subdued again, but he still spread his hands emphatically. "Especially when you are still injured so."

"You saved my life," Fayt reminded him. "This is the very least I can do to repay you."

"Still-"

"The doctor fixed me up anyway," he half-lied, "And I'm sure that Meena wants it fixed, right, Meena?" He looked to the little girl, who had plucked up the music box again and held it cradled in her arms. She nodded eagerly, uttering a little squeak of excitement.

With that sound, Niklas hung his head in defeat. Fayt had been brought into their home at Meena's will and, it seemed, he would now repay them at the same bidding. "Thank you...good sir."

It was a bit more reluctant and morose than he would have liked, but Fayt took what he could get. "There's just one thing, Niklas." The boy looked back up at him. "In return, do you think I could get my sword back? I don't want to go through the forest without it."

There was a long silence as Niklas stared him down. The steady gaze made Fayt uncomfortable, but he did not break eye contact. "You _swear_," the boy said at last, "that you are not with Norton and his gang?"

Fayt nodded. Norton and his gang, after all, were much of the reason Fayt wanted the sword in his hands again for this trek. "That's one thing I'm not. You don't believe me?"

"No. I trust you."

But not entirely, said the dark eyes. Maybe, Fayt thought, never entirely again. "Thanks."

"Do not thank me," Niklas replied dully. He shook his head as he turned away, retreating deeper into the house again - perhaps, Fayt thought, to retrieve the hidden sword. "Be wary instead. If you are not one of Norton's gang, as you say, you will be in even more danger outside the village."

"I know," Fayt said quietly and then, louder to be sure that Niklas heard him, "I'll be fine."

There was silence for a time, Meena happily playing with the broken music box, cooing to it that everything would fine soon, and then Niklas returned. The sword, though not large, was nonetheless almost as tall as he was; he was able to carry it, Fayt was sure, only by merit of its light synthetic materials. He held it out wordlessly at first, but spoke when Fayt took hold of the scabbard.

"Don't overdo it," was all he said, before turning back to his sister and ushering her towards the back of the house, leaning down and murmuring softly as they went.

Fayt stayed where he was, watching them go until they disappeared into one of the back rooms, then stood and began to wrestle with the scabbard. It was more difficult to fit onto his back now with the thicker bandages the locals used than it had been when he first synthesized it, but when he finally managed it felt good to have it there again. He reached up and touched the pommel of the sword, not drawing or even gripping it but simply touching it, affirming its reality once more. It was a reality that affected him as powerfully as any medicine. He felt stronger knowing it was there. He felt as if he could do anything. _I am Adonis Klein, _he told himself. _I have fought through the ruins of Listia and crossed great oceans, pursued from foreign kingdoms. I am a rough-edged hero and a real man of the dark ages. I can walk through a forest and fix a little girl's music box. _He looked at the crutch where he had left it propped against the door, and decided that a man like that would not need it at all. More practically, he remembered the vines and pitfalls of the forest; it would only be one more thing for them to catch and trip him on. When he limped out the door, he left it behind.

Perhaps the return of the sword was a medicine, or perhaps the medicines of the village apothecary, however primitive, were simply more effective than he had given them credit for. His third journey along the stone steps was easier than the first two, even without the crutch; and though his limp persisted he could no longer feel it, not only in his numbed feet and knees but all along the abused muscles. One thing was certain, he thought - after all of this, he would never have complaints of fatigue or soreness after a long basketball practice again.

He made the village gates easily enough, always looking straight ahead and never to the sides, even as he could feel the mistrustful and frightened eyes of the villagers on him, even as he could hear their murmurs and whispers. From there, he found that the road and village itself were surrounded by sprawling fields. As the apothecary had so bitterly noted, they were almost entirely untended except for a few scattered and strained workers - and even these stopped their work if they noticed him, straightening up and staring fearfully as he passed. Though Fayt could not tell one of the native plants from another, the haphazard appearance of much of the vegetation springing up from the red earth suggested that many of those fields were filled more with weeds than produce. The sight made him uneasy all over again. If this was the autumn season, after all, that meant that winter was not far, and the village head had mentioned a lord. Assuming taxes were universal, after that distant lord took his dues and the stranger Norton took his plunder, how much would be left from these abandoned fields for the villagers who had tried to tend them? He tried not to think about it, but it stuck and scratched in the back of his mind like a burr.

He did not stop until he came to the place in the road, just past the edge of the fields and just before the first reaching trees of the forest's edge, where the red dirt was heavily scuffed and marred. This, he knew, was the place that he had fallen. He knelt and touched the deep gouges his sword had made when it skidded out from under his leaning weight. Had Niklas really carried him all this way? He looked back the way he had come, towards the village, and saw the fresh ruts where he must have been dragged along by the tiny boy. He felt his throat tighten, and his admiration for the boy grew, as did his resolve to see the children's kindness repaid.

Before he rose, he reached under his poncho to his shirt pocket and retrieved his communicator. The protective outer casing of the thickly disk-shaped device was slightly worse for the wear, sporting a long, jagged crack up over one side and the front face, but when he opened it the internal mechanisms all appeared to be in working order. In any case, the green activity light for the translator function was lit, and the the tiny display screen continually flashed with the words 'DISTRESS SIGNAL: TRANSMITTING'. Beside it, another indicator reassured him that it was doing so at its maximum strength and range. Satisfied, if only with the fact that if the readouts were faulty he did not have the technical knowledge to recognize or fix it anyway, he closed the casing tightly and tucked the device away again. He hesitated a moment more before deciding that he would not bring out his quad scanner until he needed it, when he was forced to leave the road for the woods again. He also decided, as he carefully pushed himself back up to his feet and resumed his journey, that he would not go far enough along the road to run into the bandit guards again. No sense in borrowing trouble twice.

Fayt did not track the distance that he walked, but he was certain that he was at least a few miles from Whipple when the main road rejoined the recently cleared viney forest path, both much farther than he had thought he could have managed in his exhausted and delirious state of the other day and much less far than it had felt. He paused, squinting down it into the dappled light beneath and between the trees. How long and far would this one be? How long and far had he walked the day before, in any case? The range of his scanner almost twice over, he knew that, but how far was that? He realized for the first time that he had no idea; he did not even know exactly how to check. It was just another thing that he had taken for granted and never really expected to need. When he was rescued, he promised himself, and made it back home to Earth, he would take the time to study and learn all of the device's functions. He would do it in the time that he had already sworn to take away from simulation games.

_What if they patrol the roads? _He found himself wondering, not certain if it was himself or that small second voice inside (which was also himself, of course, but sounded so much more like Sophia). He did not answer the thought, but reached up and touched the pommel of the sword again. It was not an easy answer, but it was the one that he had and the one that he needed. He shrugged up his shoulders, resettling the sheath, and stepped from packed earth onto trampled vines. They crackled and sighed as if welcoming back to the fold. After some time following the path, he withdrew his quad scanner from his back pocket, thankful that the children had not thought to search their strange guest, and flipped it open. If the bandits did patrol the roads, he would see them coming and prepare for them. If not, he would see their watchpost coming up and would be ready to re-enter the underbrush instead. That was the trek he really needed to brace himself for. It had not been that long, after all, since the same trip had very nearly broken him.

Not this time though, he told himself. This time would be different. This time he was prepared...and, he admitted, the numbness of his muscles and tattered feet going into it would not hurt. When he did reach the place where he would have to push back into the wild, dark hell of trees and underbrush, away from the sanity and order of the road, he did so without letting himself hesitate. If he hesitated, he might turn back. If he turned back, he would not be able to look at sweet Meena again. Not after making such a promise. He had used words like 'I think' and 'should be able to', but he knew that was what it had really been - a promise to fix her precious treasure. He reminded himself of that whenever he stumbled on the raised roots or was forced to one knee after stepping into a hidden pitfall. When he drew his sword to cut at the clutching vines or simply use it as a prop to help his footing, he reminded himself. When he was forced to stop, panting for breath, to rest his weary body and check his bearings on the quad scanner, he reminded himself. Maybe it was the reminder that made the journey less terrible than before, or maybe it was the fact that he was prepared for pitfalls, to watch for sudden cliffs or raised roots, to duck from low branches. Perhaps it was also that he had left a clear trail to follow on his first clumsy trek. He marveled at it: it looked almost as if the pod itself had gone careening through the woods, so massive and blatant was the path of trampled growth, disturbed leaves, and broken branches. Had he really caused such destruction? It seemed impossible, but in any case made the going easier. Ground it had taken him hours to hack and struggle over all but flew beneath him, and the obstacles that had seemed so unbearable before, now that he was ready for them, were suddenly less insurmountable. This did not mean that he was not scratched, and tired, and sweaty, and sore all over again when he finally emerged from the deep grey forest to the hilly clearing where his pod had landed, only that he was still conscious when he did so. Given his last trek through the forest and how it had ended, he found this an indescribable triumph, and took a moment both to recover himself and to savor it.

But when he sheathed his sword and continued towards the pod, the feeling of triumph fled. Before he left, he had covered the pod with loose brush and fallen branches, but now all of these were gone. The pod lay exposed, metal glinting dully back up at the grey sky. It was not this, however, that made his heart drop into his feet, or left his mouth dry and his head light with disbelief. A stiff wind could have destroyed his slipshod camouflage.

The pod itself had been taken apart.

"What...?" The word came out a short gasp, as if he had been punched. Well, that was fine; he _felt _like he had been punched. His sword fell from nerveless fingers, thumping dully to the ground, and he stumbled forward a few unsteady steps before breaking into a limping run. Stopped again. What good would running do? Whatever had happened here was already over. He turned slowly, taking it all in with a blank stare. He could feel his jaw hanging slackly and could not bring himself to care.

The outer casings of the pod had been peeled back; the welds broken, the panels discarded like chunks of a beetle's shell to expose the coiled innards. A part of the outer hull actually lay alongside it, the internal mechanisms pried free. They were piled in the center of the great panel, some cracked or chipped from poor handling. Loose parts, objects bristling with chips and wires that Fayt could not hope to identify, sprockets and clamps, seals and coolant tubes and god-knew-what, lay strewn haphazardly around the clearing like a child's toys. He walked forward slowly, stopping every so often to pick one up and let it fall back from his fingers again when he continued towards the gutted frame that remained. "What...happened?" he asked, only to answer himself immediately, his voice cracking slightly. "The parts and equipment...they've been _stripped!_"

Yes, _stripped, _that was the word for it. He realized it even as it passed his lips, even as he had not realized it before. He ran his hands along the side, searching for the replicator panel, and found it gone...along with the machinery beneath. Not a stray wire or cable had been left behind there. _Stripped. _But how? Why? He sank slowly down to his knees, sifting through the debris in silence. There was no way the inhabitants knew what any of this was, how to use it or even that it could be useful. If they had just smashed it up, not understanding, it would have made sense, but this...this was no mindless destruction. This was deliberate, even precise. He wracked his mind for answers and found only more questions. How had they even managed to take the pod apart to begin with? Surely their primitive tools could never have dismantled the outer casing like this?

He stayed down on the ground for a long time, but eventually he rose again. Clambering into the gutted hulk, he continued to search. Maybe, he thought, the removal of the replicator had been a coincidence, some happy accident - a local had happened through chance to activate it properly and created...something, something that made them want the machine. It was impossible of course, a replicator wasn't made so that it could be activated by accident, and even so what would a local from some backwater place like this know about removing such a delicate piece of machinery with as much precision as the empty casing showed? He clung to the idea anyway, telling himself that as impossible as it was it was at least less so than the alternative. But his search only confirmed the truth: along with the replicator, the communications array had also been taken, along with the first aid kit and both of the engines. Things an underdeveloped society might remotely recognize, such as the single seat - strangely crafted for such a planet, certainly, but comfortable and readily recognizable for what it was - or emergency backup rations, had been left untouched, while less obvious objects such as a small portable generator and a breathing mask had been taken from the small cockpit. It was not a coincidence at all. It was impossible for it to be a coincidence. Someone else was here on this underdeveloped planet who recognized things like gravitic warp drives and creation engines, knew their value, and that someone had scrapped his pod for parts. Not only had Fayt been powerless to stop it...he had been oblivious.

He bunched his shoulders up against the thought and emerged, now oily and despondent as well as dirty, from the shattered hull. There was no point in wasting any more time here. He had not yet quite grasped the passage of the seemingly never-ending autumn evenings here on Vanguard III, but he knew that it had been many, many hours since the light first took on that dim slant already when he left, and he had been gone for many, many hours more. He should get back to the village now. There was nothing left for him here. Anything and everything of use had been taken. He picked his sword back up as he went, but holding it did not bolster him quite the way it had before. The discarded parts of the pod were just as real, after all, and they had weighed far more heavily in his hands.

The distress signal from his personal communicator did not have the range or power of the one from the escape pod. While it would lead anyone on the planet to him, it would not reach far beyond the planet itself - at least, not beyond Vanguard's solar system. Vanguard's underdeveloped and untraveled backwater solar system.

The distress signal in the escape pod had been dismantled and removed along with the rest of the communications array.

If someone had not already followed it this far, he would not be found.

The journey back to Whipple went more slowly than the journey away, but he was aware of none of it. It was night when he returned, deep and black, his feet dragging in the dust. They had bled through the bandages but he could not feel it and did not care, recognizing it only from the dull squelching sound of his steps. The truth banged around his skull like a raucous bell, like the terrible scream of the evacuation hall alarms. If his signal had not already been followed this far, he would not be found. He stumbled down the stone stairs in the night-silence of the village, stumbled up the creaking wooden steps to a home, he thought the children's but was too dazed to be certain, to care, and thought only that. If someone had not followed it this far, he would not be found.

"_Fayt!_"

It was the sound of Meena's tiny voice calling his name, both ecstatic and nearly crying, which finally roused him from his stupor. She came careening down the short hallway of the tiny home and threw herself onto him, hugging about his legs and burying her face against the dirty front of his poncho. Slowly, with a bizarre sense of deja vu, he lifted a hand to place it on her tiny head and, seeing it filthy with blood and grime, dropped it back to his side again. From the corner of his eye, he saw Niklas move in the darkness of the house, turning to look at him. He wondered what he must look like to the boy. Niklas' solemn, quiet face gave away nothing.

When Meena looked up to him and said his name again, a question this time, he looked down to her and forced a smile. "Well hello there," he said. It sounded more cheerful than he felt. Fake. But it made her smile again, and that was good. It also drew Niklas from his dark place against the wall.

"What a relief- you are well!" He took hold of one of Fayt's hands, gently, and led him to one of the chairs. Fayt began to protest, but found that his legs were not in agreement - he collapsed into the seat as soon as he neared it. "Those in the fields...they said that Norton's men were about something in the direction you left in. We were worried."

Norton. Of course. The stranger. What had the locals harped on, from Niklas' first questions to the murmurs of the villagers in the street? His round ears and his clothes, both so different...and both so like this Norton's. The smile dropped from his face, and he turned his eyes grimly towards Niklas. For once, he thought, the two of them must look very much alike. "Niklas. Could you please tell me more about Norton and his gang? Who are they?"

Meena's eyes turned away from Fayt, to Niklas; Niklas' eyes dropped to the floor. There was a long silence.

"Niklas, I need-"

"I do not know everything myself," the boy said, his voice subdued. Even in the quiet, Fayt could hardly hear him. "He...Norton appeared suddenly in our village about half a year past. He ordered the people here to supply him with food. Of course we refused at first. Much of the food belongs to our Lord, and the village needs the rest as supplies to survive the harsh winter. Norton was in fact ordering the village...to die..."

The boy quieted for a moment, but this time Fayt did not prompt him. He wanted to reach out and tilt the boy's chin up again, but he did not do that either. Keeping his head down, Fayt could tell, was all that hid the tears threatening at the corners of Niklas' eyes.

"When people refused him he called upon this mysterious light. It came out of his hand, and those it touched disappeared, one after the other! Carl, Sirin, Kurt...gone. All gone. And our father, who resisted to the very end. Of course the village head told our lord, but he said that people disappearing into thin air was nonsense, and didn't want to hear any more about it. So...we must feed two lords now, and many of the villagers have even joined Norton's gang themselves."

It was an ugly story, and not one that made much sense unless one picked out a single line with a single assumption. "A mysterious light that makes people disappear...?" Fayt repeated it thoughtfully, lowering his head. He spoke more loudly after that, not to himself this time but to Niklas again. "When I first came, you asked about my clothes and ears."

"Yes. Norton wore clothes made out of a strange material that was neither cotton nor linen, just like clothes that you wear. And his ears were shaped like yours. That is why I did not trust you at first...I apologize."

Fayt was already shaking his head. "Don't worry about it." He dropped his head again, closing his eyes. The light, the clothes, the ears...and then his mysteriously stripped pod on a planet where no one should have recognized the parts. One assumption, an assumption no one of this planet would have any way or reason to apply, could explain them all. He put his hands to his face, mindless of the dirt and oil and blood, and scrubbed at it.

"Is...something the matter?" Niklas asked, cautiously.

"Nothing," Fayt murmured into his bandages, and then lifted his head, speaking clearly. "Nothing. I was just thinking." Thinking, which was not going to help anything. The events of the village had proven that the other interstellar castaway could be dangerous...but thinking was not going to get Fayt anywhere. He had to meet this 'Norton'. At this point the man might be, and certainly possessed, his only possible way off of the planet.

Meena tugged at Fayt's poncho again, breaking his chain of thought. He turned a sad smile to her. "Hey...I'm sorry, but it's going to take me a little more time to fix your music box, okay? Can you wait just a little longer?"

"Okay!" she agreed brightly. She did not let go of his poncho, but cuddled against him.

Niklas frowned. "They said...that Norton's gang carried something off. Did it belong to you?"

"No." Not the first outright lie he had told to them. "It didn't. Don't worry. I'll fix your music box."

For a moment, more silence, somehow tense. Niklas did not believe him, Fayt realized. He trusted him, but did not believe him. He felt his back stiffening slightly, maybe to defend himself, maybe to give flesh to the lie.

"Niklas!" Meena's sharp insistence shattered the tension like glass. She released Fayt and latched onto her brother instead. "Niklas, I'm hungry! Now Fayt's back, let's eat!"

"...Yes." He turned his eyes away from Fayt, but only reluctantly. "Very well. Let us eat."

The food was bland but filling, though there was not much, and the water tasted of iron. Fayt changed his filthy bandages believing he would not be able to sleep, not with the thinking he had to do, the worrying, the planning. He hung his sword by the bed and shook out his poncho thinking that he would spend the night staring at stars through the gaps in the ceiling, but when he lay his head back his eyes were already closed.

If he dreamed, it was only of darkness.


	7. 06

**DISCLAIMER:** I, The Mad Poet, do not own any Star Ocean game, publication, or related character. I am a poor fan with too much time on my hands with no money, so don't sue me. This novelization is being written solely for my own sick, twisted amusement; and views expressed herein do not reflect those of the original creators. Do not expect a replica of the game - I am One Sick Puppy. By that token, the following fanfiction and all original concepts therein are my own; do not steal them because I will find out and beat you death with a crowbar. I know where you sleep.

Expect explicit violence, mature themes, politics, crude and/or ethnic jokes, lots of prejudice, more violence, mindgames, a reality check, and enough religious references to choke a Mormon choir.

Flames will be used to work on my tan.

Much credit, love, and general adoration to the great Lord Batpig, Osidiano, who has helped me with so much of this - including putting up with that awful excuse for an SO game long enough to start this.

* * *

**THOU SHALT NOT**

**06**

Fayt awoke to a feeling of overwhelming awareness: awareness that his entire body was screaming profanity at him for his exertions the day before, awareness that he had never in his life felt in so great a need for a shower, and most of all awareness that someone was crying in the next room. He stared at the ceiling for a moment, squinting in the piecemeal streams of light that filtered down through the patchy straw and splattered over his face. When he determined that the crying was not in fact his imagination, he rolled out of bed and hated every second of it.

The swelling in his feet made the bandages tight, and made walking feel as though he were limping along on a pair of wrapped balloons. The few stumbling steps it took to clear the small room and narrow hall beyond it felt almost as long as his trek through the forest the day before. His eyes were still hazy with sleep when they blearily cast about the other bedroom, not quite able to focus on the tiny huddled mass crying against one wall. He blinked a few times in an attempt to clear them. "Mn...Meena?" He blinked a few more times, until he was able to confirm that it was in fact the little girl curled up in a nearly fetal ball and crying into her hands. Perhaps the greater surprise was that her brother was not there to comfort her - he was, in fact, nowhere to be seen. "What's wrong? Where's Niklas?"

Meena gave another hiccuping sob, wiping at her face with a long sleeve as she looked up at him. Her eyes were puffy and her nose running: she had clearly been at it for a while already. She took a few deep breaths, then sniffled again and finally answered him. "I-I don't know."

"Did he go somewhere?"

"I-I don't know. When I woke up he was already gone." She sniffled for a moment, voice hitching higher. "Did he disappear? Just like Mama and Papa-"

The shrill edge to her voice, bordering on hysteria, cut right through any remaining tiredness Fayt might have felt. He plastered a smile onto his face as quickly as he could and shook his head, cutting in before she could begin to cry again. "No, no. Niklas would never leave you like that, Meena. It'll be all right. Look, I'll go out and find him, okay?"

She stared up at him blankly. "My big brother Niklas is gone," she said, as if she had not heard him. "Am...am I all alone now?"

"No, Meena-"

But the idea had taken hold, and the edge of near-hysteria she had teetered on crumbled out from under her: Meena's sobs became a high, screaming wail for her brother. Fayt flinched in the face of it, almost clamping his hands to his ears. Instead, he dropped to one knee in front of her and put his hands on her shoulders as reassuringly as he could. He tried to give them a comforting squeeze, but with his thick bandages managed to do little more than rattle her. "Meena...Meena! It'll be okay! I'll find him. I'll go find him right now, okay?"

The screams hiccuped into tiny, pitiful mewls instead as she attempted to gulp them back down. He chest hitched once, then twice, and he was certain that she was going to start screaming again. Instead, she asked him very quietly – so quietly he almost did not hear it for the ringing in his ears - "You...you really will? You'll really go find my big brother for me?"

"Of course I will." Fayt couldn't quite keep the relief out of his voice that she'd stopped crying, but he figured that was all right. Meena probably would not have known the difference even if she weren't still hitching and streaming a combination of tears and mucus down her face. He grimaced a little and reached up to pull away strands of her hair which had gotten stuck to her face by the mess. "Just as soon as you stop crying. So please...please stop crying, okay?"

She hiccuped again, still sobbing and snuffling pitifully, but nodded her head and let Fayt continue to brush at her face. He smiled at her. "Okay. Atta girl." He stayed like that with her for a moment longer. He was worried, just a little, that if he stood and stepped away from her too soon she would begin to scream again.

When she had calmed down a little – the hitches turning into quiet shivering and the gulping half-sobs softening back down to the audible but more subdued crying that he had awakened to – he rose slowly to his feet again, moving his hands from her shoulders only when he rose enough that he could not maintain the contact any more. "You're going to be okay, Meena. I'll be back with Niklas before you know it."

She nodded, but did not rise up from her huddled place on the floor. Her hand had come up to her face; Fayt suspected she might have started to suck on her thumb. Well, that was all right too. Some things, maybe, were universal for a reason.

Backing towards the door, Fayt kept an eye on her until he was in the hallway again, and then turned around. He rubbed his hands, now slimy with the discharge of Meena's misery, on the legs of his shorts for lack of any place better as he ducked back into the room that had become 'his'. There he sat on the edge of the bed for a moment, collecting his thoughts. Where _would _Niklas have gone, not only without Meena but without telling her? Only just the night before the idea of the grim-faced young boy leaving his sister alone had seemed wholly unimaginable.

He sighed, putting his face into his hands and scrubbing at his cheeks and closed eyes. Letting the harsh texture gritting over his skin wake him. "Just sitting here isn't going to solve anything," he told himself, and the still small voice in the back of his mind replied, _neither will running off half-cocked when you can barely even walk._

He had nothing to say to that. Instead, he pulled his hands away from his face – the bandages, changed only the night before, now grimy – and bent to reach for his sandals. He wrestled them on over his swollen and wrapped feet and ham-fistedly tied the straps into ugly knots. They were not correct but, he thought, at least they would hold the shoes to his feet. Or should, in any case. How often had he been called on to tie reliable knots? It was yet another thing he promised himself he would take the time to learn later, when he returned home. Until then, he could only hope they did not come untied and trip him.

When he rose to his feet again, he stopped, hesitating. After a moment, he reached to the place beside his bed and picked up his sword. He held it loosely by the sheath, letting the straps dangle from his wrapped fingertips, and watched the pommel swing slightly. Niklas could not have gone far, could he? There was no way Fayt would need his weapon; no reason to bring it with him. He thought of the way that the villagers had watched him the day before, the things the village head and apothecary had told him. To bring the weapon, Fayt thought, would only be borrowing trouble. He did not even know for certain how well he would be able to use it with his bandages. He had still not yet drawn it to try; not as a weapon, anyway, instead of a walking stick. He told himself all of this, not needing to hear any of it from the small voice in the back of his mind (who did not, he thought, like the sword at all; not sounding as much as it did like Sophia's). But it was still the thought of Niklas and his dark, wary eyes that decided him. He closed his hand over the strap as well as he could for a moment, and then wrestled it onto his back. His stiff muscles protested; he was sweating by the time he finished and one foot had slipped in its sandal, so the straps pinched the arch through the bandaging. Grimacing, he wriggled it back into place, but he could already feel that his clumsy knot had been pulled slightly loose.

"I can't believe I'm doing this," he muttered as he knelt to re-tie the knot. He could not be sure if he was referring to taking his weapon out into town when the locals already saw him as a threat, or simply to going out searching for Niklas when the boy would, surely, be back soon on his own in any case. Reasonably Fayt knew that he could not, _would _not have gone far. He was at the apothecary's, maybe, or whatever local shops there might be, or dutifully helping in the field. Something benign like that. No reason for Meena to be upset and _certainly_ no reason for him to run off all half-cocked when he could barely even walk.

He stood again and pulled his poncho on over his sword, covering it. The pommel still stuck up over his shoulder through the opening of the neck. He doubted it would fool anybody.

"Meena," he said loudly as he stepped back out into the hallway, "I'm going to go find Niklas. We'll both be back soon, okay?"

Meena did not answer, but her quiet sobs had quieted further so he could not longer hear them. He stuck his head into the other room to check on her and saw that she was still huddled down.

"Meena?"

She did not look up. "I want my brother. Where's my big brother?"

"I'll find him." He pulled back out of the room again, rolling his shoulders to settle the scabbard more comfortably over them. It was probably best to leave her at that and just come back quickly. He would ask around the village, he thought. Check the apothecary, look for any shop or market they might have. Niklas' absence might be as easily explained as wanting to buy breakfast for his little sister.

_If you believed that, you wouldn't be wearing your sword._ The small voice snipped at him. _You _shouldn't _be wearing your sword. _

He ignored it and half-strode, half-limped down the hall to the front room. Meena's music box still sat on the table, open and silent. If Niklas had eaten before leaving Fayt could not tell, but that didn't mean anything. He had seen the night before that Niklas was tidy; he would have cleaned up any mess he made immediately. And maybe he hadn't eaten at all. Hadn't he told Fayt that food was in short supply since Norton's arrival, and soon to be even shorter? Fayt shook his head. Standing around thinking, he reminded himself again, wasn't going to solve anything.

The good news was that moving around seemed to be loosening his muscles. By the time he was on the ground outside he felt a little less stiff; by the time he made his way up the uneven stone steps to the village proper (slowly, so slowly) some of the pain in his legs was actually starting to release as they unwound from their tight sleep-induced knots. It occurred to him belatedly that he should have stretched and that he knew better than _not _to have.

He stopped at the top of the steps again, as he had the day before, and looked slowly around the collection of ramshackle huts. Just as then, pale and dirty faces marked the landscape like misplaced punctuation. This time they did not seem to have noticed him before he them...but then, this time he was not gawping around like a foreigner seeing his first farming town, either. Watching the people rather than scanning the surroundings this time, he thought that they looked preoccupied, almost frantic, hurrying here and there as if on errands of great importance but not really seeming to go anywhere or accomplish anything. He frowned. The entire spectacle had a feeling of wrongness to it, left him with a sense of unease. He couldn't put his finger on it, but chalked the entire mood to the story Niklas had told him. The air of frightened urgency could almost certainly be traced back to Norton and the impending hard winter he had doomed them to.

After a moment, he stirred himself to motion again and trudged forward, still half-limping, towards what he remembered to be the apothecary's home. He did not know any of the other buildings and, not wanting to barge into random residences aside, he thought it one of the most likely places to find the boy. He knocked even though it was, in its way, a place of public business; he wasn't sure of the local etiquette and didn't want to take chances.

The apothecary opened the door and immediately froze, her eyes jerking from his face to the place over his shoulder the sword hilt jutted up. He kicked himself for wearing it and held his hands out, open and palm up to show that they were empty. "I'm just looking for-"

"We told you to go," the woman said stiffly. She did not even glance down to see Fayt's hands. Her eyes remained fixed on the weapon. "Why are you still here? _What have you done with that poor boy?"_

The first question Fayt had expected, and he was even opening his mouth to answer it when the second one struck him like a fist in the gut. He stared at the apothecary blankly for a moment, jaw slightly slack, and then: "...What?"

"_Niklas_, damn you, and you know perfectly well! What have you done with him?" To his surprise he saw that her fists were clenched, and trembling with rage: armed or not, she was ready to strike him. "If anything happens...if anything happens I'll never forgive you! What you do is your business, but you leave those children alone. You leave them out of it."

Fayt raised his hands a little further, bringing them up near his shoulders, and took a step back. "I...I don't know what you're talking about. I haven't done- listen, I'm looking for Niklas. His sister is worried-"

The woman made a curt sound, then spat to one side. "Her and the rest of us!"

Fayt felt, suddenly, both colder than before and inexplicably more glad for the weight of the sword beneath his poncho. "...What do you mean?"

"I mean he's _gone, _we don't know where to! This time of day, he'd usually be up and working cheerfully. We know he's the one but he's nowhere to be found at the other." She paused a moment, eyes narrow and ears twitching slightly as she gauged his expression suspiciously. "...You really don't know, do you."

Wide-eyed, Fayt shook his head. He was as stunned by the idea that such a glum child could have been said to do _anything _cheerfully as by the idea that Niklas might be legitimately missing.

Spitting to the side again, the apothecary loosened her fists and tucked them into the deep pockets of her apron, still giving Fayt's face long up-and-down consideration, then lengthening the looks to encompass the rest of him. "...You're really going to look for him."

"Yes. I'm...I'm worried about him too. He risked a lot to help me."

Whether the woman was moved by his sincerity or simply accepted it, she balled up her shoulders and then dropped them, heavily. It seemed to be a monumental effort on her behalf. The look of suspicion was replaced by a plain scowl again. "Only right that you do, then. I've no doubt it's your fault, whatever's got him off."

Fayt bristled slightly, but bit back a retort. Right now he would take what he could get. "Where would he usually be right now?"

"The fields, most likely, unless there was something else that needed doing – and there wasn't, not for him. We even saw him setting off for them, but it seems he went on through and never stopped. They said he ran right past with a wild look on his face." Her eyes narrowed again – Fayt saw the motion just before he reflexively jerked his head away, swallowing hard. He thought of the way Niklas had watched him the night before. The way he had asked him that question, more than once in different ways:_ They said Norton's gang carried something off. Did it belong to you? _The way he had quietly but clearly not believed Fayt's answer. "You tell me what's going on, stranger. And you tell me now."

"I don't know," he said, still not looking back at her; a half-truth. "I just...thank you for telling me this. I have to go."

"If anything happens to those children, we'll kill you." He jerked his head back up and around at the words, stunned: not only by the words themselves but by the cold, easy way she spoke them. The woman's eyes were hard when he met them, so that he had to look away again. "We've always struggled to scratch out a living, but we've always _lived_. We're tired of strangers taking it away from us. They're innocent children. They've suffered enough."

"I know. I mean I understand. I mean...I agree. I agree, they don't deserve-" He stopped, swallowing. It clicked in his throat and he realized that he was thirsty; he had left without drinking.

"None of us 'deserve' this." She turned away sharply, suddenly, and Fayt let out a long breath. He started to turn, but at the sound of one sandal scraping the porch the apothecary lifted a hand. "Don't move! Stay right there!"

Fayt froze in place, halfway through his turn. "I have to-"

"Stay."

A part of him, used to listening to his mother, to Sophia, to any number of female teachers or guides or authorities, locked into place completely. He would have felt more embarrassed about it except that this one had only just moments ago very flatly threatened his life. So he stayed right where he was and watched the woman rifle about in her pots and salves, picking up this and that and finally a roll of the thick, coarse bandages. She crammed all of these into an equally rough-looking sack on a long cord, the material unbleached and undyed, and marched back to the door holding it out to him at arm's length. He could hear the contents clinking and scraping gently against each other. "Here. If he's hurt, wherever he is, it's your fault and I expect you to care for him. If I see one scratch, one bruise-"

Fayt took the pack readily, winding the cord around his wrist and lifting his hand to let it hang carefully over his shoulder. "I will. You won't. Thank you."

"It's not for you."

"I know. Thank you anyway."

She eyed him suspiciously for a moment more, then withdrew back into the building and slammed the door in his face. Fayt blinked at it for a moment, then let out a long breath and slowly relaxed from his tense posture. He took a step back, waiting to see if she would return and add anything – information or ultimatum – and then finished his turn, slowly descending from the entry to the building. He took the steps slowly as much for his thoughts as his body.

It was true that he didn't know what was going on. But if Niklas had run past the fields, 'with a wild look on his face'... Well, the apothecary might not have told him which way past the fields Niklas had gone, but he could make an educated guess.

"Oh, Niklas," he sighed, shaking his head. "What are you doing? What are you _thinking?_" And it was his fault, he knew. The apothecary was right about that much. If anything happened, it would be on him.

He hitched up the sack of medicines over his shoulder, shifted to resettle his sword, and started slowly out of the village. He kept his head down, aware that many of the villagers paused in their searching as he passed, watching him. Sometimes murmuring among themselves. He knew what it was they were saying even without being quite able to hear or make any of it out - that he was involved. That it was his fault. Some of them, he knew, would be eying the hilt of the sword. He thought he heard Norton's name and set his jaw.

_I am Adonis, _ he told himself. _I am no-one's thug, but I will not be hurt if I am seen as one. I will raise my sword and prove them wrong. _

So instead of protesting or trying to explain himself again, he simply lifted his head proudly and followed the road out of town, following the path he had taken before towards the village gates, to outlying fields and beyond.

Just as it had been the day before, the journey seemed shorter than his previous trip. He supposed (hoped) that this meant he was recovering. He felt as though he had been recovering forever; he had always thought of himself as fit and healing had never taken this long back home. Dangers of languishing on a primitive planet, he supposed. He wondered if this Norton had any proper medical supplies. Even if he didn't Fayt though he could probably synthesize some from his stolen pod equipment, even if he was not sure exactly what he would need.

He pulled his quad scanner loose from his pocket when he returned to the viney forest road and its welcome springiness. Flipping the small device open, he tapped at it until it was set to scan for humanoid lifeforms and kept his eyes on the screen. Behind his location he saw the collection of indicators for Whipple and its surrounding fields; ahead, the cluster he had first taken for the village and now understood to be Norton's hideaway. A few more taps narrowed the range slightly, pulling it in closer to his current location. He frowned slightly in surprise. Today, there was no detachment of three or four guarding the base. There were no indicators between himself and the larger mass of the base at all: the place he had met the bandits on the first day and been turned aside was devoid of life signs. Did it mean anything? He couldn't know. He closed the scanner and tucked it back into his pocket again. If anything _did _happen, he would need that hand for his sword.

The thought chilled him and he pushed it aside. He thought about each step instead: focusing on keeping his footing as he trudged over the vines, trying not to limp here where a dragging foot would trip him.

At the rock formation, there was no one waiting to tell him off or turn him aside this time. But with his mind not clouded by either despair or false optimism, he could clearly see what he had missed the day before both coming and going. The massive wreckage of the forest edge had not come from his passage and never could have. The gouges in the ferrous ground, some so sharply cleaved even the metallic shards of the rocks were scratched, could only have been made by something large and heavy being dragged through. The path passed the rocks and continued into the ruins beyond, passing where he could not see around one crumbling wall.

There were small footprints in the freshly overturned soil. They could have belonged to the youngest of the guards he had seen before, but they could also have belonged to Niklas. Fayt crouched for a moment to look at them before admitting that he could not tell either how long they had been there or who they truly belonged to and rising to continue forward. He paused again at the first crumbling wall of the ruins, but no one stopped him there either. When he tilted his head and held his breath, all he heard was the wind through the vines and the sound of running water. Not a soul was in sight.

The ruins were beautiful and, in a way, awful. There was a sense to them that had not been conveyed in all of his simulation games, something that Listia had not prepared him for. As he stepped from the shadow of the wall he turned his head slowly, looking up and around, and realized that the gap had once been a great gate. Beneath his feet, the soft whisper of vegetation alternated with the harsh rasp of stone: a glance down informed him that what he walked over had once been cobbled, even tiled. Once, the stones had been tightly fitted together, planed smooth, sanded and polished: he could still see the glittering sheen here and there in remote corners. Now, moss and weeds grew up through the gaps made by erosion, creeping over and covering the workmanship. The area was open, but collapsed pillars littered it, the sides carved in patterns worn shallow by time. Tumbled bricks from fallen walls littered the ground. The walls themselves, for the most part, were gone: either collapsed entirely or vanished under humps of vegetation. At least two structures had been demolished by trees growing out of the inside of them, ripping apart ceilings and walls to strew them across the surroundings. Mushrooms grew in the dark hollows, pushing up from the ground all bulbous and red.

Not so different from Listia. But what Listia lacked was...it was...

"Life," he said quietly. He took another step forward. What he was standing in had once been a richly appointed courtyard. Here were the low barriers that had separated the entry walk from gardens, or hedges, now simply depressed pits filled with wild growing things. Here, its roof and walls collapsed into a heap, only a corner of interlocked yellow stones still standing - this, he was certain, had been the gatehouse. He touched the stones and found they were warm from the sun, warm enough to feel through his bandages. Except that maybe they were not; maybe that was only his imagination. Maybe that was only the sense of _life, _not only that which had passed but that which lingered on. Small creatures moved in the foliage. Somewhere, water ran. And once, he did not know how long ago, men and women had walked these paths when they were smooth and new. Who had they been? Why had they left?

Distantly, he heard someone laugh. The sound passed in the space of a moment but it was enough to remind him of why he was there in the first place. Shaking off the brief sense of wonder, Fayt set his shoulders again and continued on through the ruins, passing under decayed archways and over feral gardens reminding himself all the way _I am Adonis Klein I am a rough-edged hero and a real man of the dark ages. _Hekept one hand on the hilt of his sword, praying at the same time _oh God oh God please don't make me have to use this. _He used the walls and trees and formless piles of rubble for cover, trying to keep low and out of sight, not knowing where or when he might come across a bandit or four and unwilling to give up his sword hand to bring out his scanner and find out.

It occurred to him belatedly that the solution was simply to free up his other hand somehow. Rolling his eyes at himself for overlooking such an obvious solution, he unslung the pack of medicines carefully from his back, setting it gently down on a soft patch of ground and unwinding the rough cord from his hand. It was a simple matter to tie the cord into a loop he could hang from his shoulder like a proper traveling pack. It felt right; like something a traveler on an undeveloped planet _would _have.

He was still busy patting himself on the back for coming up with such a clever and appropriate solution when one of the bandits stumbled across him.

There was a moment where the two simply stared at each other, neither seeming to know what to do with the other. The young man – boy, whichever, Fayt still did not know for certain how to tell the difference – had simply rounded a bend in the sprawling grounds of the ruins and in doing so brought the two nearly nose-to-nose if not for the difference in their heights. He blinked up at Fayt; Fayt blinked down at him. He saw Fayt's strange clothes and ears; Fayt saw the knife in his hand.

Fayt leapt back, hand going to the hilt of his sword. The bandit leapt forward, jabbing out with his knife. It whisked the air in front of Fayt's face, and then over his head as he slipped, losing his footing in his poorly-tied sandals, and toppled onto his rear on the ground. He tried to roll but his limbs sang – no, _shrieked_ – with pain when he did so and he pulled up short, dropping his hands to scramble awkwardly backwards, crablike, instead.

_This isn't how it's supposed to go, _he found himself thinking, wildly. _I can do this. I know how to fight. I've done it a million times. This isn't how it's supposed to go-_

The bandit let out a wild yell of excitement, seeing him helpless and probably imagining himself being applauded for taking care of an armed trespasser, maybe by Norton himself. Maybe rewarded somehow, he didn't know, possessions or status or whatever it was that they valued here; it didn't matter, why was he _thinking _about this when the bandit was charging forward and the knife was swinging down-

Fayt let his hands take the weight of his body, ignoring the way they howled, and kicked out and up with one leg. He caught the charging bandit squarely in the knee. The youth's eyes went wide and his mouth opened in a silent 'o' of pain and surprise as his charge became a fall. Fayt jerked his legs up out of the way, pulling them under himself as the bandit hit the ground face first. The air was smacked out of his body so hard that Fayt could hear it; a curious muted _whuf_. He did not marvel at it, but instead scrambled upright himself and yanked at his sword. He suddenly found that he could not pull it loose. He couldn't even grip it properly, his wrapped fingers slipping off the pommel. He realized he was trying to draw it too quickly.

The bandit was struggling to his feet. Fayt kicked him again, in the face this time, and heard a faint crunching sound. The bandit opened his mouth – to scream, certainly – and for a moment time stood still. If he screamed, Fayt knew, others would hear him. They would come.

And Fayt understood right now that he was not Adonis. He was not Adonis at all. This was not a game. And if they came at him in numbers, he would lose.

He grabbed the bandit's russet hair and jerked him up, pulling his head, and slammed his knee upward into the exposed throat. The scream became a clotty gag. The bandit's eyes rolled as his hands twitched spasmodically upward, clawing at his throat.

_Oh God, _Fayt thought, his stomach suddenly turning liquid. _Oh God, please don't let him die. _What he said instead was "Run away." His voice did not shake. He did not know how. He did not think it sounded like his voice at all. "Don't go to your friends. Don't go to your boss. Don't tell anyone I was here. Just leave."

But the bandit nodded, croaking weakly. It seemed to be the only sound he could make. When Fayt let go of his hair, he reached for his knife at first. Fayt kicked it away, and he did not chase it. He scrambled to his feet and ran back the way that Fayt had come, towards the entrance to the ruins.

When he was gone, Fayt dropped to his knees, doubling over so that his forehead pressed to the mossy ground, cool on his skin. He did not vomit, but he felt as if he would – almost as if he had to. There could not possibly be another reaction, another response. That was not how it was supposed to have gone. His hands were clammy inside of his bandages; his tailbone and his kneecap both ached with the impacts they had taken. His sword remained in its sheath, barely even unseated by all his mad grabbing. He was sweating, though it was not from the exertion, which even in his injured state was not really so much as all that. He had fought more strenuous battles, after all, as Adonis. He was supposed to have known how to do it. All of his time in the simulation games was supposed to have taught him. But when the knife had come towards him, all he had been able to think was, _this is real, this isn't a game, this is real; _and again, the same words when he had lashed out at the bandit. Who was, after all, just a boy, almost certainly younger than himself and with no martial training. No idea how to use his weapon. The fight, quick and clumsy as it had been, had been real, real like his sword, and if he had managed to draw the weapon after all, what then? It was not a blunt pipe. Its edges were sharp.

Fayt closed his eyes for a moment, gasping deeply at air with the damp, humid smell of the foliage just beneath him, then sucking it in in slow calming breaths, then lifted his head slowly from the ground. The knife lay nearby. A kitchen knife, like those of the guards who had turned him aside the day before. He reached out to it, shifting up to one knee, and picked it up. Pressing a thumb to the blade, he found that it was not even sharp, only indenting his bandages and not cutting the material at all. He would not have used it to cut a potato. What would have happened if he had drawn his sword after all?

_Not so much fun any more, is it Fayt? _Asked the small voice.

He dropped the knife again, simply opening his hand and letting it roll off to the ground with a muted clatter-thump. He remained on one knee for a moment, elbow resting over the back of his leg and head down, thinking.

"...But I can't be caught off-guard like that again," he said after a moment. He had to be in control. Unafraid. He _had_ to be Adonis. And he told himself that he was, again, and then again, as he began to unwind the bandages from his hands. _ I am Adonis Klein I am a rough-edged hero and a real man of the dark ages. I am Adonis Klein and I can pretend this is a game if I have to. I am Adonis. I am Adonis. I am Adonis. I am not afraid to spill bandit blood. Not to protect the innocent. Not for Niklas. I am Adonis._

The wounds on his hands had reopened – probably when he had made his made crab-scramble away from the knife - and slightly pink around the edges. The color was not a good sign, he knew. He reached up to pull his sword from his back again – carefully, this time – and used it to cut the bandaging from what had been the middle layer of the wraps apart from the rest. It was not bloodied like the inner bandaging (or faintly yellowed; the yellowish, crusted look to parts of it made him uneasy but he could not know what they meant) or covered in grime like the outer, but comparatively clean. These new, smaller stretches of material he wrapped around his hands again, tightly and carefully, leaving himself the articulation of his fingers as best he could. Wasn't it a classic look? How many heroes in his games had wrapped their hands just so? He didn't know if it was for grip or just to look good; in his case, he would hope for the former, and also that it would do the job of about three times more material well enough without denying him his weapon. He sheathed the sword again, then snapped a hand up and tried to draw it quickly. It caught faintly on the edge of the sheath, but that might have been his own lack of practice at such a thing. Adonis wore his sword at his side, after all. And at least now he was able to grip it. It would have to do.

He remained on one knee a moment longer, to remove and then re-tie his sandals at least a little more securely, then lifted his head and rose back to his feet with a promise to himself to be more aware of his surroundings. To pay, at least, a bit more attention to which sounds were small animals moving through the ruins and which were sandaled feet scraping over the old stones. It had been careless of him not to do so in the first place. And, he determined, he would not walk quite so openly along them himself. He moved off the center of the broad walkway and into the shadow of an overgrown wall. Whatever the ruins had been before, he thought, there had been an awful lot of buildings scattered over the grounds. It would be – had been – stupid of him not to use them to his advantage.

When he pressed on, then, it was hugging the wall. He could hear a scraping and an unpleasant rattle from inside the pack the apothecary had given him. He was sure one of the fragile pots had broken when he fell, and he knew that he should probably check, but what would he do if it had? Throw out something he might potentially still need, even if it was spilled? He wouldn't recognize it, true, and he could probably (certainly) replicate better once he retrieved his escape pod's parts if medical attention was actually required. But there was still the UP3 to consider, and he had not so quickly forgotten the blessed numbness the primitive medicines had lent to his injuries. In the case of less than an emergency – or more than one if the replicator was not immediately available – primitive might be far, far better than nothing.

He moved through the ruins as quietly as he could, stepping on the weeds and moss when he could, avoiding the open and avoiding the broken cobbles. It was not long before he began to realize the sheer scale of the ruins: they seemed to sprawl on forever, and turn after turn brought him only more of the same, crumbling stairways only rising or descending to more walled gardens full of toppled pillars and collapsed foundations. Had it been a city? He did not think so. There was something about it that spoke of stillness. A river tracked through it, wrapping around one side of the ruins. It was not a wide river, but the water as dark and swift-looking; it was wide enough to stop him short in his explorations. Looking down into it he could see the light-colored stones of what had once been a bridge tumbled like a children's blocks far below, grown over with a slime of aquatic plant life. Small fish flickered in and out of sight, their scales flashing silver in the light. He could smell it, standing on the bank, sharp and metallic. His reflection on the surface of the water shifted and wavered with a life of its own, marred by the skittering of water insects or by sticks and leaves rushing by on the current.

He stopped there, for a little while, and found himself thinking that Sophia would have thought it was beautiful. Where was she? Had her pod also landed here on Vanguard III, or had its systems directed it somewhere else? Had she been picked up safely? It made him feel small and alone. He turned away from the water and continued his search.

More than once, he came across more of the bandits. Now that he was paying attention it was not difficult to avoid them; secure in their hideout and the villagers' fear of Norton, they made no effort to hide. They tromped along loudly talking and laughing amongst themselves, often nervously, in groups of three or four. It made Fayt realize how truly fortunate he had been to have only bumped into the one earlier. They were all armed. Sometimes the knives were kept shoved into their cloth belts, but far more often they carried them, turning them nervously, passing them from hand to hand. The same motions he had seen in the guards. Norton had been there for months but, it seemed, his henchmen were still not used to the role. When he heard them coming, Fayt ducked into the remains of the buildings and huddled down among the vines until they passed, but he thought that he simply could have pressed himself against the wall and gone unseen. The bandits did not turn their attentions away from their conversations, did not look around themselves. Blissfully oblivious.

Could he really bring himself to fight them, Fayt wondered? If it came down to it again, could he really draw his sword on people who didn't know any better, who had probably simply taken up the knives because the alternative was too frightening for them to consider?

Would Adonis have fought them?

He knew that he was asking too many questions. If it came down to it, if it really came down to it, four of them to one of him, he knew and understood what he had on his first day here on Vanguard III: that he could fight them, because he would have to, and that he would end up hurting them but that he would have no choice. So he did not test their oblivion. He stayed down and out of sight and as quiet as he knew how. More and more of them as he moved deeper and deeper into the ruins, and so his progress became slower and slower, eventually moving only from the buildings themselves, carefully squeezing through gaps in the fallen walls or creeping through the arcs of ancient windows while the local ruffians chattered outside. Even that though, he understood, was not entirely safe. As he entered the heart of their hideout, he began to find that the more complete structures, the ones still whole enough to offer shelter from the elements, were littered with signs of recent habitation: doused cooking fires, the refuse of meals, a blanket thrown over a dirty pad on the ground passing for a bed. Now and again he smelled new smoke and, peering out of one of the buildings, saw it emerging thin and white from another.

He slowed down again after that. Always waiting before moving to the next building, searching it with his eyes and ears as well as he could before slipping through it as quickly as he could without making noise. He was glad for how loud they were: he felt like he was still making enough noise to wake the dead. It was the kind of thing they didn't teach you in games: the way the items in your pack clicked and shifted, the creak and jingle of a sheath harness, the way tiny stones grit and ground beneath your feet even when you breathed, clicking and screeching on the hard ground beneath. The loudness of rustling vines when you brushed against them. His graceless clambering through the windows alone felt as if it should have brought the entire place down on him. Sneaking, he decided, was something that only really worked in fiction.

All the while he watched for Niklas – finding nothing, no signs of his passage; not certain the boy could have made it in at all without being seen and tossed out again – and for any clue of the location of his stolen escape pod parts. These were easier to spot. It was clear that the bandits had not had the strength to outright carry the heavy metal components so far, and had simply dragged them: they left deep, clear gouges on the ground through many areas that were easy to follow simply by glancing out of his hiding places every so often to confirm their presence.

They led him, eventually, to another wall.

It was larger than any of the others, and primarily whole as far as he could tell. Vines covered it entirely, giving it a bulging, shifting look as the breeze moved through the leaves, letting it whisper and murmur unsettlingly – enough so that there were no bandits near to it. Here and there, he could see odd shapes on the stone surface beneath that he presumed must be some kind of mural or relief carving, though he could not tell of what without taking a closer look. If he had wanted to, he could have brushed the vines aside and seen. But his focus went to the archway that broke its surface instead. It was whole, if worn. Through it, he could see an equally whole-if-worn looking building. One with an immense door. The perfect place for Norton to hole up and make his headquarters? Offering both privacy and shelter, Fayt thought that it just might be. He took one last look around to make absolutely sure no one would see him, and darted across the last stretch of open ground between himself and the wall, keeping himself low the way he had seen in movies. He slipped through the arch and pressed his back to the vines on the opposite side, looking around to be sure he had not stumbled into another group. But the area around the new building was empty. It only convinced him further that he would find Norton and his escape pod parts inside.

Pushing off of the wall, Fayt approached the building. It was not large in any real sense, but compared to what he had seen on Vanguard III thus far it was massive. Built, as near as he could tell through the moss and vines, of interlocking stone bricks, its height suggested that it might be two stories tall. However, the great door rose all the way up the front, flanked by decorative pillars on either side, and similarly large window frames marched either way along the building's length as well. Both door and windows were set deeply into frames of smoothly molded stone, and both were fitted with diamond-patterned metal lattice work. Made of iron – of course it would be, wouldn't it – it had long since gone to rust. When Fayt reached out to touch one of the door's handles, he could feel the surface layers of it crumbling beneath his grip. When he pulled he felt it rattle in the pitted wood, loose and no longer properly seated, but the door itself did not budge. He tried pushing as well, but made no more progress that way. Releasing the handle, he set his shoulder, leaned back, and then slammed against the door. He succeeded only in hurting his shoulder.

Rubbing at the new sore spot slightly, Fayt took a step back and tilted his head to look up. "Well...I guess I can't get in this way." The lattice in the nearby windows, likewise, looked solidly set despite some crumbling around the edges of the stone frames themselves. Up above, he could see that there were holes in the edges of the roof – another tree had burst through part of it – but there was no apparent way to climb up; the windows did not reach quite that high and were deeply depressed into the wall anyway. He also had no illusions about his ability to scale the wall without equipment, especially in his current condition. "Maybe around the back...?"

He went around to the right, skirting rubble from a collapsed corner high above and walking slowly to sweep his eyes up and down the structure, looking for possible entrances. The windows were all solid, as he had suspected – he even stopped to rattle a few of them to check. Looking in through the lattice pattern, he could see that it was not in fact only some of the roof, but most of it that was missing. The floor of the building was lush, the walls of its rooms damaged by weather. Objects he assumed to have once been furniture, at least the metal pieces, were strewn about haphazardly. Looking in through several of them, he felt no more the wiser as to the original purpose of the ruins at all.

Nothing on the front. Nothing along the side – though he found the building was not as wide as it was long; rectangular, where the other structures in the ruins had been almost unanimously square – but as he rounded the corner to the back, he immediately jerked back against the wall again out of sight.

Around the back, directly parallel to the large door in the front, he had seen the outline of another decorative pillar suggesting another, similar door. But in front of it had been three of the bandits.

He cursed under his breath. The wall followed the building all the way around, and far more closely at the sides and back than in the front: there was no way to approach the back door except along the narrow corridor the trio guarded. Had they seen him when he rounded the corner? He didn't think so, he hadn't heard their idle conversation change its tone, but it hardly mattered. Their presence there all but confirmed for him that there was a back door, that it worked, and that there was something there to be guarded –_ how_, asked the small voice, _since you've seen groups of them all over? _- but he would have to go through them if he wanted to go forward at all. He took a deep breath, reaching up to touch the hilt of his sword again where it stuck up over his shoulder. Against three of them, 'go through' could become literal.

He thought of the bandit he had bumped into when he first entered the ruins and his stomach turned. He had tried to draw his sword not even thinking about what doing so meant then: in the impulse to defend himself, the idea that he could have murdered the boy hadn't even occurred to him. Just a kid, with no martial training, who had been terrified and hardly able to hold his knife-

He dropped his hand to his side abruptly. "Right. They're here because they're afraid of Norton. They don't know what they're doing. They don't know how to fight, they're used to scared villagers." And three of them or not, if an armed man strode confidently up and told them to scatter... Well. The other had certainly run when Fayt had told him to, and he had been taken for a friend of Norton's already. Maybe it was time to play the similarity.

He set his shoulders and, after a moment's hesitation, pulled off his poncho. If he was going to do this he might as well go all in. Lifting his chin and putting on what he imagined was the kind of face Adonis Klein _would _have worn in such a situation, he swung out around the corner and strode towards the small band by the door.

He took a moment to think that they were not terribly attentive guards—they did not seem to notice him even when he was practically on top of them. It might have been overconfidence as much as inexperience, though: after all, who would approach them here, in the depths of the ruins, through the camps of all of their fellows?

He cleared his throat – impatiently and not nervously, he hoped – and they all three turned to face him. The leader of the trio was apparent immediately: he was smaller than either of the others, shorter than the one and less solid than the other, but the other two fell into place beside and just behind him. In a way, the image they presented was effective. It made both of them look bigger. All three had real knives. The tallest of them held his in one hand, stroking a finger along the flat of the blade without looking; staring at Fayt unsettlingly instead.

_There's something wrong with them, _he realized, and then, _it's too late to turn back now. _

"Who are you, kid?" The apparent leader spoke up before Fayt could. He was sickly-pale and gaunt; his face had a sunken look to it with black circles around his eyes. He twitched. It was not one particular facial tic but he seemed to cycle through all of them at random, one or two at a time, sometimes jerking the corner of his mouth up into a sneer and sometimes juddering an eye shut in a spastic wink. It made Fayt uncomfortable to look at him because of it. "What'dya want? This here's Lord Norton's turf, so beat it."

Fayt steeled himself, and then told the honest truth as calmly as he could. "I don't want to fight you guys. I'm just looking for some things." Three sets of eyes narrowed at him. He met them evenly. "You seen a little boy around here?"

That did seem to throw them slightly. "A...l_ittle boy_?" Half suspicious, half surprised. Fayt simply nodded, and the leader – after a brief glance to his fellows – reached up to rub at his forehead in what Fayt assumed was a thoughtful motion. "You mean Niklas?" He looked back up, maybe to gauge Fayt's reaction. What Fayt _wanted _to do was to grab him and shake him and and ask him where Niklas was. Instead, he nodded and kept his face still. The thug grinned nervously, mouth ticking at the corner. "Yeah. Yeah, he was lookin' for some things too. Kid came 'round here, blabberin' 'bout getting somethin' back and wantin' to see Lord Norton."

"And then?"

One of the others shifted slightly. The ringleader let out a little laugh, dropping his hand to his knife. "We're good guys. Good neighbors. Kind-hearted fellas that we are, we gave him what he wanted. I bet Lord Norton's reducatin' the uppity lil' brat right now."

For a moment, Fayt felt nothing. Maybe it was the time that it took for the bandit's words to sink in. "...What?" He felt his performance falter as his head began to ache: deep and hot in the center of his skull, small but there like a heated needle lanced deeply into a single point. The sunlight seemed too bright. He wanted to bury his face in his hands and make it go away.

The leader must have seen him falter because he took a step forward, lifting his hand from his knife to gesture in a broad sweep. "It's the kid's own fault. Nothing good can come from messin' with Lord Norton. Don't worry – he'll learn it's better to join us than fight us." The pinpoint spread. Someone stirring the needle. Fayt clenched his fists as the thug went on: "It's a shame the apple don't fall too far from the tree. Stupid must run in the family."

Fayt lunged forward. He felt his mouth open and knew he must have said something because he could feel it pulling out of the constriction in his throat, but he wasn't sure what it was. He knew that he almost ended up throwing himself on the bandit's knife as the gesturing hand suddenly snapped down and whipped it out. He held it confidently, more easily than the others Fayt had seen before. He knew it better. Fayt stopped with the point of it holding steady only a centimeter from his nose. "Whoa there! Didn't I just say you can't come through here?"

He didn't move. It didn't matter that this wasn't what he had expected, wasn't what he had planned, was everything he had been afraid of happening and more. He stared up at the thug from the end of the blade, still half-bent from his forward lunge. "Get out of my way."

"Move me." The knife flicked to one side. Momentarily, Fayt felt a slight sting on the end of his nose. The thug had nicked him. "You wanna see the kid, you're gonna have to."

Instead of flinching, Fayt straightened up, slowy. His hand went to his sword. He did not notice the motion until he felt his hand wrap around the grip. "What gives you punks the right-"

"Just another village idiot in need of educatin', huh?" He jerked his head to the side. The other two closed in from around his sides. Fayt took a step back, and they grinned. The third pulled his knife as well as all three moved forward.

"I said-" The step had not been a retreat, but deliberate. Now, Fayt let his weight fall onto the foot in the back and drew his other leg up. As he had in his earlier fight, he kicked out, this time aiming high for the stomach of the lead bandit. His foot sank into the thug's gut, forcing the air out of him and knocking him back into his fellows. All three stumbled; the largest one lost his footing. He dropped his knife and clutched at the others for support only to drag them down on top of himself when he fell, hard, on his back. "-_Get out of my way!"_

Fayt went to go over the fallen trio, but this time he was the one who was tripped. The tall one stuck a leg out, sitting upright at the same time and making a hard upward jab with the knife. Fayt dodged the blow easily, stepping to one side, but it tangled his feet around the outstretched leg and he stumbled. His hand flew from his sword reflexively to catch himself on the close walls. The three on the ground broke from their tangle, each scrambling in a different direction. They used his momentary loss of balance to get back on their feet. The more solid of the three, now less his weapon after the fall, balled up his fists instead.

"Bad move," said the ringleader.

Fayt agreed, but it was a little late for that now. He put his back to the wall of the building and drew his sword, edging a step to the side. The ringleader drove from him to cut him off from the door and Fayt sidestepped again, back towards one of the windows this time. The solid one came at him from that side and he ducked between them, into the narrow walk, and turned to face them again. The tallest grabbed him from behind as he turned – he felt the knife, briefly, feather against his throat - and he shoved back with his legs as hard as he could, slamming the thug into the other wall. The thug gasped but held on; Fayt drove his elbow back hard into the youth's ribs and his knife dropped as well.

A punch hit Fayt in the gut. He gasped, stars bursting briefly in front of his eyes, and without thinking he thrust his sword forward, then jerked it upward. The motion came naturally, practiced in a thousand simulations, and the attacking bandit was forced to dive to one side, hitting the ground once again. Fayt brought up his other hand to the sword's hilt, reversing the blow, and brought it sweeping down again as he stepped off of the wall. His foot came down, hard, into the thug's gut, pinning him into place for the blow. He thought of Listia, of the beetles, their wire framework shining through, glistening green. When he brought the sword down on the thug's head, he wondered, would it too simply crash in and cease to be? Would he vanish into a blur of colored pixels?

He could not bring himself to think of it as terrible. The thought seemed natural, like the swing of the sword. His head was pounding. There was sweat in his eyes. Was it from the fight? Could it be? They had laughed about Niklas' fate. When he brought the sword down it would not be like the simulations, like the beetles, it would be real; real like the pipe, like the hallways, alarms blaring, the slick floors. But they had laughed and it all felt so natural and oh, the heat, oh god, his head, and it seemed just fine that it was not a game any more after all in the face of that.

The dark eyes beneath him were so wide and afraid. They stared up through hands raised in a useless gesture, either of protection or surrender. The sword came down.

Fayt turned the blade. The edges scraped along the thug's hands as the sword passed between them, and the flat struck him squarely in the forehead with a dull sound_. _A look of surprise crossed the thug's face momentarily before his eyes rolled up and he went limp on the ground.

Lifting the blade again, Fayt rounded on the other two. "One down."

Why had he said it? How could he have said it? How was his voice so even? He didn't know. The remaining thugs hesitated in the face of it, looking suddenly uncertain, and he forced himself not to. He stepped forward and drew his blade back to strike again. The remaining bandits' eyes flicked briefly to their fallen fellow, prone but breathing on the ground, his hands and forehead bleeding. Back up to Fayt.

Almost as one, they turned to run.

What should have happened then, Fayt knew, was that he would lower his sword and let them go. It was what he had planned for at last. He would sheath his sword and enter the building to retrieve both Niklas and, surely, his stolen escape pod components with no further trouble from anyone who did not clearly deserve whatever it was that they got. But these two had laughed. They had laughed when they spoke of Niklas' fate, and maybe that, ultimately, was why none of that happened at all.

Fayt swung his sword back out of the way, letting the tip of the blade drop back behind his shoulder as he lifted the weapon high, and he reached for one of the thugs as they ran. He caught the back of their loose outer vest at its neck and twisted his hand, wrapping it in the material for grip. He jerked his hand back once, hard, and caught a brief glimpse of the thug's panicked expression as he was pulled into range for the pommel of the weapon to slam down into the crown of his skull. The resounding _crack _sent a shudder down Fayt's spine, not a chill but a weird jittering warmth creeping down from the hot pinpoint in his head.

He shoved the thug on his hand forward again, unwinding himself from the rough cloth and releasing his grip at the same time. He didn't know if he had knocked his opponent unconscious this time, as he had the other, but it hardly mattered. The thug who had been their ringleader was thrown forward into his taller friend, tangling him with inarticulate limbs and knocking him to the ground. They went down in a heap of dull color, moaning, clutching and twitching aimlessly against the ground. Fayt watched them for a moment, the tip of his sword pointed down towards the two in case they tried to rise again as he reached up to rub at his neck. It too was warm, and it itched and tingled, faintly burning. When his fingers touched they felt wet; when he drew his hand back, there was blood on the outside of his bandages. Not _much _blood, certainly, because it little more than a shallow nick it came from, but still blood. _His_ blood.

It bolted Fayt back down to reality hard and fast. He drew in a deep breath, then let it back out in a rush and quickly sheathed his sword again. His hands were shaking. His head still pounded but the heat was already dissipating. That the fight had been more of what he had expected the first time – that he had known what he was doing, that it had gone the way a fight should have gone, even that he had managed to fight all three without (he hoped) seriously injuring any of them - was somehow not as reassuring as he had thought it would be. He looked down to the thugs where they sprawled on the ground, then away again quickly.

To a certain degree, what happened to them didn't matter. He hadn't wanted to hurt them, hadn't even wanted to fight them in the first place, and what injuries they had sustained should be superficial – cracked skulls and bruised ribs. Those, they deserved. Anything worse...well, he hadn't wanted to fight them. He had told them to get out of the way. And they had come at him with the intent to...

He touched his neck again and shivered. To not pull any punches, at least.

But the door was right there. It was what he had come for. Stepping around the largest of the three thugs – he was already stirring slightly again – Fayt went to the much smaller door set into the back wall of the building. It was not criss-crossed by metal like the front, but only accented with smaller, more utilitarian bands, as if to reinforce the wood. It was not, however, aged like the front door either: it was clearly either new or repaired and strengthened with so much new material it might as well have been. When he took the handle, it swung open easily. A stairwell descended into the darkness before him, light splashing over the first few broad, stone steps. Further down, he could see a yellowish glow that suggested torches. Strange smells wafted up to him: musty, old smells; something pungent and sickly-sweet. He could hear a quiet humming, distant and faintly hollow-sounding. Water dripping somewhere inside.

Fayt spared one last look back at the trio. None of them had risen, either because they were not yet able or they did not dare. He paused and bent down to pick up one of their knives. Unlike the others, they were sharp and felt balanced in his hands; not kitchen knives at all. He stuck the small weapon under the strap of his sheath, near his sword itself, then rose and looked back down into the darkness below.

"...Don't worry, Niklas. I'm coming."

He entered the building, and pulled the door shut behind him. The blackness of the place enfolded him; the smell a part of it as much as any actual decrease in light. The taste of the air changed palpably without the faint breeze that had drifted through the ruins, thicker and older. It reminded him vaguely of the apothecary's home in its sharpness. He found a part of himself wondering if that meant that something had died down here. He didn't know if he had meant the thought as a joke, but it wasn't funny anyway.

He stood for a moment longer, letting his eyes adjust from the bright daylight to the faintly smoky darkness, and then moved carefully down the stairs. Here and there he could feel a loose stone shift faintly in its setting, but the stairs for the most part seemed to be in good condition, and by keeping one hand to the wall he did not lose his footing. Part of the way down the stairwell he came to a tiny alcove carved into the wall slightly below his eye level – at that of the local peoples, it appeared to be – and a lamp set into it, burning dimly. He peered at it for a handle, squinting slightly, and when he found one picked the light up by it and held it out in front of himself to light the way.

Air currents whirled around his legs strangely. He almost felt as if the building were breathing all around him. It was a stupid thought, but it made him draw up his shoulders a bit anyway as he moved forward. The way the lamplight flickered made the shadows jump and move in ways that left it seeming...less stupid. Anyway, on an underdeveloped planet, who knew what might lurk in abandoned buildings? Norton at least, and who knew how many more thugs. The ones at the door had been better armed and better trained, but still essentially cowards looking for easy prey. Fayt did not think that those kept close in Norton's hideout itself would be quite so soft.

Eventually, the stairs ended. The hallway continued forward a short ways after that, punctuated by more lamps in more alcoves, before ending suddenly in a larger, open room. Fayt stood in the doorway blinking around it in surprise.

The room was filled with...things. His mind could provide him no better single word: _things_, objects and tools and possessions of all kinds, littered it throughout. Once it seemed that there must have been some form of order to the collection. Boxes and barrels where stacked and grouped together; weapon stands lined one wall, while another seemed to be dedicated to some kind of shelving which rose to the ceiling, accessed by a sagging, rotted wooden ladder. But at some point in the past it had been ransacked, and now tapestries had been torn down to lay across the floor and drape over the humped forms of furniture and even what appeared to be some form of cart. Rusted weapons were scattered here and there like jackstraws; spears strewn from one end of the room to another, swords jutting up from between piles of rifled detritus, shields propped up or laying flat at random. Broken pottery was scattered about like carpeting. Fayt heard it crunch underfoot when he stepped forward, staring around the room slightly slack-jawed. What was all of this stuff? What was it for? From one upended chest he saw a spill of what he imagined to be rotted clothing. It seemed like a collection of everything one might have needed in life and more. Wine bottles lay in broken drifts against the corners, stains marring the dirty rock floors in long meandering trails from them to thick metal grates set in the floor. He stepped closer to one, cocking an ear at the hollow sound of running water from below, close but not loud.

After a moment, holding his lamp above his head and moving it slowly as he turned to survey the room – a gratuitous effort; the room itself was lit by several such lamps of its own already – he lowered his light again and shrugged. Though it looked as though it had been riffled through fairly recently, it was clear that neither Niklas nor his escape pod parts were in the room. The thugs had said that Norton was probably dealing with Niklas right now; it meant that Fayt was not far behind, but also that he could not afford to stand around gawping at things. If he still wanted to explore the ruins after, there would be time for it then. He continued forward, stepping around the drifts debris as he moved deeper into the room towards where, on the far wall, he could see the dark square of another doorway.

The humming was louder here than it had been in the upper hall – or, not louder but more pervasive, more tangible. Fayt could feel it against his skin, tingling, not quite lifting the hairs on his arm. It felt familiar to him, but in such a generic way he could not quite place it. He paused for a moment where the hall forked off in two different directions, gentle curving around each, to simply listening. He quickly realized that the sound was close enough to see the source of: a soft, bluish-green light reflected back at him from the faintly damp stones on the wall down the right fork. He lowered his lamp and slowly stepped towards it, peering around a faint bend in the hallway before turning it himself.

The room that greeted him was not occupied, but it was far from empty, and its contents filled him with a rush of familiarity and relief. The interlocking stone of the walls and floors alike had been covered almost in their entirety by cables, wire bundles, and gleaming metal sheets. It was not a primitive metal, but the same as that of the Federation ship interiors, with the same muted finish. The glow that had lit the hall outside came from arrays of mounted consoles and pale, suspended light screens scrolling with letters and numbered data. A stack of sealed supply boxes sat against one wall, beside a displaced flight chair. Clearly all of these parts had been taken from a ship – more than one, in fact. The metal supply cases were not marked with the Federation's insignia, but another, unfamiliar one. Against one wall, hastily wired in to what must have been the primary control console, Fayt saw the distinct, familiar shape of his stolen portable generator, and his replicator as well. Federation communications equipment stood out in sharp contrast against another console array of some other, not immediately apparent origin.

If Fayt had still harbored any doubts at all that this Norton was also an off-worlder, they were now gone.

"But what is he _doing _here...?" Fayt murmured as he cautiously moved further into the room. Was Norton also a refugee from another crash? It seemed like the most likely possibility, but still told him nothing. When he paused to look at the scrolling letters and numbers on one of the consoles, he could not immediately recognize the characters, but that told him only something else that he already knew; that Norton was not terran. It was nothing that the appearance of much of the equipment did not already tell him, which was that he was also probably not a member of a Federation-allied race, which really did more to open the possibilities than to narrow them down.

He paused partway into the room. He thought that he could probably reactivate his distress signal from the console his communications array was currently attached to – knew that he could, in fact – but if he could not read the console, it would take time. Would the language settings change as easily as those of a Federation computer?

If Norton really did have Niklas, did he _have _the time to find out?

He looked around slowly, then shook his head and took a step back. "...There'll be time for this after," he said, and turned his back on the familiar technology. It was hard, but not as hard as he thought it would be. At least now he knew where it was and it would, after all, still be there once he was certain Niklas was safe again.

_You should at least take care of your wounds, _the small soft voice warned him, but he told it, _later._ There would still be time for that later, as well.

Back out in the hallway, with the soft glow and pervasive hum behind him, Fayt lifted his lamp again and looked around. Peering around the curves of several corners, he could see a sliver of a grate set in the wall this time, upright: it took him a moment to recognize it as door constructed of metal bars. The kind of thing one expected to find, really, in some dank dungeon in a fantasy simulation game. It was almost laughable, and when he passed it on his way to explore the left fork he reached out to touch it almost wonderingly, a pang of regret striking him for the bandages on his hand that kept him from feeling the cold metal or its texture. How many such dungeons had he rescued nobles and princesses from in his simulations? Had they felt real there? Would it be the same? He peered in between the bars but saw nothing of note, and after a moment continued down the hall again.

The right fork ended in a massive pair of wooden double doors, cracked slightly open. He stuck his head between them to peer cautiously around, but saw only another large room littered with old, rotted crates and their spilled contents. The far wall, barely visible in the poor lighting, was punctuated with the dark gaps of more barred cells. He was about to withdraw and go back to look for another path when he heard a faint sound issue from one of them. It was a small sound, and at first he could not be sure he had heard it at all, but it was enough to make him pause in place. He waited a moment, and then it came again: a faint scraping sound from the far side of the room.

"Hello?" He said quietly, and immediately kicked himself. It was probably a rat – or whatever this planet had in place of the vermin – but what if it was one of the bandits? Was he so eager for another fight he had to go around announcing himself?

But it was not a call for him to identify himself that came back from the darkness of the cell. Instead, it was a small, weak moan. The sound of a child in pain.

Forgetting caution, ignoring the snap of pain that sprang up his legs when he did so, Fayt broke from the door at a sprint, scrambling across the floor to the far wall. He could not find the purchase to stop; he slammed into the bars, skidding, and kept himself from falling only by gripping them tightly. Somewhere in all of it he had dropped his lamp but it didn't particularly matter; pressed up against the bars as he was, he could plainly see the tiny, prone form of Niklas' body crumpled face-down on the floor inside.

"Niklas! You okay?" It was a stupid question. If he were okay he wouldn't have been lying there like that. But at the sound of Fayt's voice Niklas stirred slightly again, making that faint, soft scraping sound once more as his sandal scratched against the ground for purchase. His hands shivered in place for a moment, the fingers opening and closing, and then lay flat against the ground as the boy attempted to push himself upright. He succeeded only in lifting his head, arms and shoulders quivering visibly with the effort, and could not even look up immediately at that. "Fayt...?" His voice was thick and faintly slurry; the translator fed it back on a delay. "Why are you here...?"

But Fayt did not immediately answer. He had drawn in a sharp breath at the sight of Niklas' face, and did not – could not - immediately let it out again. The boy had been beaten, and badly. He was not bleeding, somehow, but his eyes were well along in the process of swelling completely shut, his cheeks puffy and red. Bruises both forming and already black littered his skin. One of his ears quivered faintly, bent alarmingly part of the way down.

_I'm going to kill him, _were the first coherent words that burst into his mind, hot like brands, somehow not at all horrible. The second: "That's what I wanted to ask you. You should never have run off like that!"

"The...the music box parts. I wanted to get them back." Niklas' swollen lids twitched faintly, as if he were looking away beneath them. "I...I could not ask you to do this for us."

"But that's crazy." Fayt stopped, shaking his head. "Niklas...you _didn't_ ask me. I offered-"

"Stop," the boy said, raising his voice with obvious effort to do so, and so Fayt did. One of Niklas' hands twitched, gripping at the floor, and his body shivered as he pulled in a breath. It was faintly wheezy-sounding and left Fayt wondering if the rest of the boy's body was in a similar state. "It is...dangerous here. You...must leave, quickly! He'll...get you..."

It was all that he could manage. The boy's eyes rolled upwards, the exposed whites flashing alarmingly in the darkness between his lids before they vanished entirely. His body slumped to the floor again, forehead dropping to the stone floor with a soft _crack_.

"Niklas?" When the boy did not answer, Fayt slammed himself against the bars, a note of hysteria creeping into his voice. "Hang in there, Niklas!"

Niklas did not answer. The heat in Fayt's skull spread downward, drying his throat. He tried to swallow around it. "Hang in there, Niklas. I'll get you out. I'll hurry and get us both out." He released the bars and took a step back, trying to stare at them instead of through them (except he couldn't stop staring through them, how could he stop staring through them at the terrible thing that lay beyond); trying to think. The doors had metal locking panels, primitive, the kind of thing his simulations had lead him to expect, but he had not seen any keys in the previous rooms. Of course, he had not been looking, but he also did not know how close that Norton might be. Was he here, in another room the entrance to which Fayt had simply not seen? If he left Niklas to go and look for a key that might or might not be there, or even to replicate one – knowing he couldn't without knowing the inside of the lock, the idea was still tempting in its simplicity – would Norton return and finish what he had started?

'Finish what he had started'. It was a terrible though, terrible in its vagueness. Fayt was not sure what he meant by it but found that he didn't want to know at all.

He reached up to touch his sword, but dropped his hand back to his side just as quickly. The lock was too heavy, too solid-looking, and he did not think his grip was strong enough to break it even if his arms turned out to be. If he tried, he might succeed only in jamming the door closed permanently. So, what options did that leave him?

His hand snapped up suddenly, on a half-formed thought, to his breast pocket, smacking against something hard and circular inside. "My- of course!" He fished inside the pocket, pulling his communicator out. The small device nonetheless had a powerful battery: by simply crossing a few internal wires and shorting it out, one could easily make a small makeshift explosive. It was the kind of thing he had seen on the news sometimes, like the war itself; always distant, always removed from his life and his world even more than the breezy fantasies of movie and simulation. But it was also the kind of thing that a teenage boy might look up on the net one day when he was bored, just because it was strange and forbidden and resulted in explosions; he had cared about it like he cared about the Aquaelie being reoutfitted for continued duty. Just a little bomb. A little mayhem he could carry in his head and tell himself he carried in his pocket, just enough to make himself feel rough and dangerous, to keep the adrenaline up.

Just a little bomb, but, he now thought, maybe just big enough to get the job done. He started to pry the casing off of the device, fumbling slightly in his hurry. _If I lose my communicator I could be stuck here, _he thought, and then, _no, I can fix the communications array from the shuttle. I can turn the distress signal back on, _then, again, horribly reasonable, horribly simple, _what if I can't?_

His fingers froze. What if he couldn't. Hadn't he just wondered about whether or not he would be able to readjust the settings again now that they'd been tampered with? And he didn't know for sure that Norton had even turned it off...but...what if he had? What if he had, and Fayt couldn't fix it? He could be stuck there, maybe forever. For a moment he almost closed the case again, when he heard Niklas blearily moan his sister's name from inside of the cell.

He shook his head hard, as if shaken from a stupor. "What am I thinking? There's no time for this..." He jerked his head from side to side again, and then, louder: "Don't worry, Niklas. I'm not leaving you."

If he got stuck, he supposed, he got stuck, and he would learn to live as Adonis after all; or something like him, anyway, knowing he had done the right thing at least. He tucked the casing between two fingers and his wrist in the hand holding the communicator, picking out internal components and wires with his free hand and reattaching them in the places he thought he remembered, thankful all the while for the anarchic tendencies of the online community. He snapped the casing back on when he was done and punched in a series of commands and settings, then jammed the entire device into the minute crevice between the door itself and the rest of the bars, as near to the lock as he could lodge it. He stood there for just a moment, watching to be sure that the external lights began to flicker out of sync, and then bolted off to one side to take cover along the rock part of the wall. He had never actually done this before. In happier circumstances it might have been more fun, but it still got his heart racing just a little. Would it actually work? He watched intently, as much for the excitement as the urgency.

He could hear the faint beeps and blips of the communicator as it attempted to reset itself according to his new parameters grow faster and more erratic. Sparks spit from under the hard casing, and then a bit of smoke trickled out of it. Leaning out from the wall, Fayt frowned slightly. Was that all? Had he made a mistake? Was that-

The device made a jarringly loud electric _crack_ of sound, and then burst in a ball of flame and plastic shrapnel. Fayt ducked and covered his head with his arms, letting out a faint yelp of alarm, even though none of the pieces made it as far as his location. After a moment, he let his arms dropped and hurried to his feet again, moving quickly towards the now-smoking door. This time, when he reached out to the bars the door creaked open at little more than a touch, taking only a light shove to scrape inward along the floor. For a moment Fayt held his breath, thinking that some of the plastic shrapnel might have hit Niklas, but it did not appear to: the smoking, faintly acrid-smelling fragments stopped almost half a foot shy of the boy's arms. With a sigh of relief, he entered the cell and went to Niklas' side, crouching down and placing his hands gently on the boy's shoulders. He could feel his breathing, shallow and faint, a little uneven. How badly had he been injured? "Hang in there, Niklas."

Gently, carefully, Fayt took hold of the tiny shoulders and rolled Niklas off of his face and onto his back. He winced at the sight that greeted him, so much more awful-looking up close; the face beaten within an inch of bleeding. It was enough that he looked away quickly, swallowing hard, but then he propped Niklas upright, one hand behind his head as he felt for bumps, and forced himself to examine the boy's face more closely. Actually inspecting him – touching the bruised cheeks lightly – Fayt was surprised to find that while the damage looked grotesque, only very little of his probing caused Niklas to show any sign of pain or even discomfort, moaning softly only when Fayt touched his crooked ear. As hard as it was to believe by looking at him, he did not appear to be too badly hurt at all: simply traumatized, and possibly in slight shock. His face was certainly still swollen of course, especially his eyes, but the damage seemed to be largely superficial, and would probably be mostly recovered by the next day. Either way, it was relief. He had feared for the worst.

As he looked down, focusing himself on the task of working his other arm up under the boy's knees to lift him, he heard a curious series of sounds: a voice, but a nonsensical one, uttering pure gibberish. Blinking in surprise, Fayt lifted his head and looked around. Only himself and Niklas were visible, the boy's swollen eyes now opened again – though whether slightly or as far as they could, it was hard to say. Then Niklas opened his mouth, and the strange sounds came again, ceasing when the boy slipped back into unconsciousness and went still in his arms again.

It occurred to Fayt belatedly that his translator had been built in to the communicator. He grimaced. "No time for regrets now I guess," he told Niklas, even though the boy could not hear him and would no longer have been able to understand him even if he could. "We'd better get out of here first." He slid his hand down from behind Niklas' head, settling it behind his back instead, and pulled the boy close against his chest as he rose slowly back to his feet. Mindful of the faint slickness of the floor and poor lighting, he walked just as slowly for the cell door again, watching every step he took from over his comatose cargo of the young boy.

He heard the hard metallic _click _and the voice at the same time. A man's voice, hard. "_Freeze!_"

Terran. His head jerked to the side at the sound of it, stunned to hear the familiar language, and for a moment he _did_ freeze, one foot half off the ground still in the shelter of the cell's doorway. He could not see the speaker around the edge of it, but he could see the source of the clicking sound. It took him a moment to process exactly what it was that he was looking at, but when he realized, he went cold.

The barrel of a gun: a phase rifle, like those held by the Federation soldiers before. It was not pointed up, not pointed to the side or the floor, but pointed at him. At _them_.

Suddenly, he did not want to meet Norton quite so much after all.

Though he froze – though it felt as if he had stood there frozen for minutes – it only lasted a moment, less than a beat. When Fayt moved again, it was to take a step back into the cell once more. He turned, stiff, automatic, and slowly lowered Niklas' body back towards the ground within the safety of the stone walls. He heard the weapon, but more than that he _felt _it fire, the sudden heat rushing by his back, the air-sucking miniature shock wave as the warning shot struck the open barred door behind him. The material suddenly radiating with it like power rods, stinking of hot metal. Tiny chips of stone struck his back, bouncing hot off of his exposed arms and shoulders, where the blast must have hit the stone beyond. They chattered onto across the floor around his feet. He turned his head to watch them and told himself _I am Adonis, _not thinking of the bodies in the evacuation facility hallway, or trying; their shriveled, smoking black eyes.

He looked at Niklas and felt the hot words digging into his head, _I'm going to kill him_, all but glowing, something felt and almost seen that drove the cold feeling away more effectively than any delusion or false platitude. He brushed the hair from Niklas' bruised face and made sure that the boy was settled against the wall, half-sitting, in such a way that he would not fall and hurt himself further, then rose to his feet. He found that he did not have to steel himself before stepping out into the open. The heat in his head steeled him, as it had in the hallways before. It pounded like a second heartbeat, roared like an engine. _I'm going to kill him. I'm going to kill him. I am going to kill him._

A second shot fired, this one cutting closer – over his shoulder, searing the tips of his hair. He could smell it burning. Somehow, he did not flinch. He simply stopped, inclining his head faintly to watch a stack of wooden crates against the back wall where the shot struck. Those that were hit by the faint orange heat-flare of the weapon were outright vaporized. Those stacked on top of them collapsed or were tossed aside by the shock wave of its impact, the heat sucking the air in and the pressure tossing it back out.

"No funny moves if you wanna stay alive," the man told him. A little lilty, half patronizing half playful now that he could see his intruder clearly; maybe amused that it was just a skinny kid in tourist clothes after all. Grating. Petty. It made a dull, numb part of Fayt's mind think of a school bully and that, maybe, was fitting. "You hear? Play nice and I'll let you live a little longer."

"That was a phase gun," was all Fayt said, and the dull, numb part of his mind wondered at its detachment. He took his eyes off of the back wall and the collapsed stack of boxes and turned them towards the village's tormentor at last. "So you must be Norton."

The man laughed. "Yeah, that's me! Norton the great!" From toe to chin, he was covered completely by a suit of thick-looking but tightly fitted synthetic black material. A coat with what appeared to be military insignias was thrown over the top of this, but it did not look to be his size and had probably belonged to a crewmate. His ears were indeed rounded; the short, spiked hair that left them exposed a sickly shade of blond. He might have passed for human, and Fayt could certainly see where the villagers had found them similar, except for his eyes. They had no white, no iris, no pupil. They were the same color as his skin. For a jarring moment Fayt thought they were not there at all, until he saw the dim light of the lamps glistening off of their wetness. "Nice to hear some genuine Terran being spoken again, huh? None of this translator delay crap. Seems like ages."

Fayt stood very still. "Why are you here?" His voice, when he spoke, remained detached and was very still; he realized that it was just as when he had spoken in the ruins above in the way it did not sound quite like his own. It conveyed none of the horror, the disgust, the rage he felt boiling and snapping through his head, making it pound with fire; none of the way his stomach lurched at those sickening wet flesh-colored eyes. "You're not from this planet, are you."

It hadn't really been a question – he absolutely could not have been – but Norton sneered as though it had been, exposing the contents of his nearly lipless mouth: a jostling nest of grotesque lamprey teeth; sharp, uneven, unnaturally white. One more glaring difference between them. The dull part of Fayt was glad for it. "I'm from Rezerb, boy."

Rezerb. He had heard of that planet – hadn't he even seen it make the news only just before the attack (and how strange that he should remember that of all things, a news clip he had not paid attention to even then; a small, detached part of his mind wondered at it, the way the human brain latched on to the tiniest of things)? "Right. That planet full of joy-seekers who keep rejecting Federation membership." What else did he know? What of it was useful to him now? Ultraviolet and other short wave light was harmful to them. They had amazing natural regeneration. He had heard a story – the kind of gross-out tale young men pass around a school campus – that if you cut off all their arms and legs, they could grow them back in half a year (and then come after you, ha ha, it had seemed so funny at the time). Injuries that would kill a human times over would only make a Rezerbian sore and angry: it was why their riots, he supposed, always turned into massacres and made the Federation news. So fighting him, especially down here in the dark, would be out even if Fayt _hadn't _brought a sword to a phaser fight.

They fed on the fluids of other organisms. He thought of it suddenly; thought of Niklas, beaten but so carefully without breaking the skin, and felt suddenly sick. The fact that he had not seen any food tucked away in Norton's lair itself. He swallowed the sudden urge to vomit. "...So what are you doing here? This is an underdeveloped planet you know. Federation or not they'll lock you up for this."

"Not much to tell." Norton shrugged. The barrel of the phase rifle bobbed with it, but stayed trained on Fayt. "I...was involved in this...er, let's call it an 'unfortunate accident'. Came out a bit much even for Rezerb. So, I ended up sentenced to life in exile on a deserted planet. The escort ship they were transporting me on had engine trouble and ended up crash landing here." He paused, thoughtful, and then suddenly gave Fayt a manic grin. "Can ya _believe _it? All I had to do was mess with their engine codes, and those stupid pilots ended up frying their own engines! I mean..." His hand snapped up, coming over his face as it to stuff down the hysterical cackle that bubbled up out of him, and for a moment Fayt braced to throw himself into action. But the moment passed as quickly as it came. Norton's hand dropped again. His fleshy eyes fixed back on Fayt, the rifle twitching as if he knew what had gone through Fayt's mind. His snide cheer did not abate in the face of the knowledge, if he did; his smile only ticked up at the corner. "Ohhhh, _man!_ All I was trying to do was cause a distraction so I could make my escape. But now here I am, no ship, and _this _planet's become my prison instead."

"And the others?" Fayt asked, some part of him knowing, or at least guessing. All of him not wanting to know. It filled him with another, sick warmth in his stomach to even think it. "Where are the others, Norton?"

"Huh?" Two more shots were fired – one on either side of him. Norton grinned. "That's 'Lord Norton' to you."

"There must have been others. Crew, other prisoners, things like that. What happened to the other people on the escort ship?" Remembering what he knew about Rezerbians. Remembering what they ate.

"Oh, those guys?" Norton spared him the details. He even had the decency to imply a less gruesome end. "They're dead, the poor suckers. They were trying to send out a distress signal and, you know, a bolt of light just flew out and smote 'em where they stood. Bam!"

Norton took a moment to laugh again, enjoying his own humor; hell, simply seeming to enjoy the sound of his own voice. But after a moment he stopped, sounding almost serious. "...That crash part was unfortunate. Not part of the plan. But as they say on Terra, 'no use crying over spilled milk'. I've been devoting myself to making this planet my new kingdom. Ya get my drift?"

"So that's why you've been raiding Whipple." He sounded so calm. How could he possibly sound so calm, all while thinking, _the signal is out no one will ever find me; _all the while thinking, _I'm going to kill you_?

"Something like that. You're a smart kid." He grinned again, full of teeth. The gun dangled casually from one hand. "It's why I've been raiding Whipple and it's why you're gonna have to die. Sorry."

_I'm going to kill him. _The words were still pounding in his head, as if on the end of a smelting hammer. Fayt realized that he was sweating. The heat, that awful hot feeling, was not just in his head: he was sweating, his eyes stinging and burning as it dripped into them. He did not wipe it away. He let it blind him, blurring the room. Norton became a black smudge against the lamplight splashed on the wall, no sickening eyes, no lamprey grin. Anonymous except for his gratingly cheerful voice yammering glibly on:

_ "_But, hey, you'll be happy to know I plan to make the most of those parts I stripped from your escape pod. I was starting to worry, you know, 'cause a guy's gotta eat. Makes it easier on me to keep everyone fat and happy."

_I'm going to kill him. _Fayt took a step forward, but the weapon snapped up to the ready again and he stopped, though he found that he was not afraid of it. He could hear a low, strange sound, harsh and rattling, and only distantly registered that it came from his own throat. Everything in the room seemed brighter, sharper, clearer, where moments before it had been a blur; his vision going bright with heat so that he thought for a moment he must be about to pass out again. "It's guys like you..."

A distant part of his mind wondered at the clarity of it, the bright, clean blue; when you were angry, games had taught him, your vision went red. The color of rage, of heat, was red, not this star-hot pale blue that cut through the haze of sweat, cut the lines of the phase rifle from Norton's hand, cut Norton's lines from the haze of the wall, the lines of his face going from jeering to puzzled to alarmed, with such laser-like precision. He could pick out the very particles in the air itself, atoms flashing and glittering like sparks from a fire that was not there, swirling around him on its heat. But not really thinking about that, any of that, with most of his mind: the nearest he still had to a coherent thought _I am (the heat I am the fire I am the heat I am the fire) going to kill him. _Not really thinking anything at all.

"Ah-_hah! _There you are!" The sudden crow of triumph did not come from Norton. The now wide-eyed Rezerbian's head snapped towards it in alarm even as Fayt's did in alertness. It was not a conscious action – not the choice of a thinking, independent being – but neither was it instinctual or at all natural; instead a jerking, almost mechanical motion that filled the distant part of him with revulsion.

It was that revulsion which jerked him from his distant state. The clarifying blue cast to his vision snapped out, leaving the room dull and dark in its wake. Norton and his gun faded back into each other and the wall, no longer carved out like stark targets. The flashing lights of the atoms died around him. Fayt realized the immense humming sound that had filled the room only because of its sudden absence. It left him feeling strangely empty and disoriented. The feeling was that of waking up from a long dream and he stood in it, then, weak-kneed, hazy, puzzled; shivering in the suddenly realized contrast of the underground air on his skin, turning his sweat to ice.

It was in this state, vulnerable and dazed, that he realized he was now surrounded.


End file.
